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10 



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THE NEW EPOCH FOR FAITH. i2mo, gilt top, 
^1.50. 

THE WITNESS TO IMMORTALITY IN LITER- 
ATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND LIFE. i2mo, gilt 
top, $1.50. 

THE CHRIST OF TO-DAY, i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY. 
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



IMMORTALITY AND THE 
NEW THEODICY 



BY 



GEORGE A. GORDON 



MINISTER OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



h 



■^ 



Cop5rright, 1897, 
By GEORGE A. GORDONo 

All rights reserved. 



FOURTH IMPRESSION 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company« 



To 

R. M. G. 

Psalm cxii. 4. 



THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 



Extract frojfz the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll^ 

who died in Keene^ County of Cheshire^ New 

Hampshire^ Jan. 2b, i8gj. 

First, In carrying out the wishes of my late 
beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam- 
bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, 
and which he always held in love and honor, the 
sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for 
the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some- 
what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is 
— one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con- 
venient day between the last day of May and the 
first day of December, on this subject, *nhe Im- 
mortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part 
of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by 
any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine 
of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor 
may be appointed to such service. The choice of 
said lecturer is not to be limited to any one rehgious 
denomination, nor to any one profession, but may 
be that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint- 
ment to take place at least six months before the 
delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be 
safely invested and three fourths of the annual in- 
terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his 
services and the remaining fourth to be expended 
in the pubHshment and gratuitous distribution of 
the lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur- 
nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same 
lecture to be named and known as '* the Ingersoll 
lecture on the Immortality of Man." 



Every one of my fellow-creatures who leaves this earthly 
brotherhood^ and whom, because he is my brother, my spirit 
cannot regard as an7iihilated, draws my thoughts after him 
beyond the grave ; he is still, and to him there belongs a place. 
While we rnourn for him here below, — as in the dim. realms 
of unconsciousness there might be mourning when a mran 
bursts from them into the light of this world'' s sun, — above 
there is rejoicing that a man is born into that world, as we 
citizens of earth receive with joy those who are born unto us. 
When I shall one day follow, it will be but joy for m,e ; sorrow 
shall remain behind in the sphere I shall have left. 

FiCHTE. 



PREFACE 



HE following essay was written 
under the appointment by which 
the author was honored, as first 
IngersoU lecturer upon '^The Immortality 
of Man/' in Harvard University. The 
appointment was received as a fresh call to 
return to a subject that for many years has 
occupied much of the writer's thought. 
Since the publication, four years ago, of his 
book, "The Witness to Immortality," new 
lines of argument have been suggested ; 
and what is here offered to the pubhc, in 
accordance with the terms of the IngersoU 
bequest, although standing entirely by itself 
and resting solely on its own merits, may 
be considered as supplementary to the ear- 
lier and larger work. 

It must be understood that the essay is 
a discussion purely upon rational grounds. 



via Preface 

While it is impossible for the writer to 
reason as if Christianity had never been, or 
to ignore its supreme insight reigning in 
the moral consciousness of our great divi- 
sion of mankind, or to appear upon this or 
any other field of inquiry in any character 
other than that of a teacher of religion, he 
has still set before himself a philosophical 
endeavor, and has therefore considered it 
inadmissible to introduce into the argu- 
ment the ultimate basis of Christian belief 
in the future life, the resurrection of Christ. 
The special feature of the essay is indi- 
cated by the term theodicy. The shadow 
that lies upon the universe cannot hide its 
abiding moral order as revealed in human 
history. The attempt is therefore made, 
after the ground is cleared of the obstruc- 
tion presented by a materialistic psycho- 
logy, to carry the question of the immor- 
tality of man to the moral conception of 
the universe for determination. It is be- 
lieved that upon the validity and integrity 
of the moral idea of the universe the entire 



Preface ix 

question turns. To exhibit that idea in its 
purity and absoluteness, in its freedom 
from the great historic limitations that have 
been fixed upon it and in its fruitfulness 
for faith, has been considered essential to 
the undertaking. The full strength of the 
logic of a universe conceived as absolutely 
righteous was deemed a necessity of the 
case. This accounts for the polemic in 
certain sections. It is a sincere sorrow- 
to be obliged to differ upon some points 
from able and honored men with whom, in 
general, the writer is in profound agree- 
ment ; but when the appeal is to the full 
and honest mind of the individual, above 
all when the truth is believed to be at stake 
and the life of humanity involved, the sor- 
row must be borne. In justification of his 
protest against Homer's orthodoxy, Plato 

thought it sufficient to say dXV ov yap irpo ye 

TTj^ a\rj6€La<; TLixrjTios dv^p. And when it came 
Plato's turn, the polemic was again vindi- 
cated almost in his own words dpi(f>oiv yap 
ovTOLV (f)L\oLv ocTtov TTpOTLfxav TTjv dXi^OeLav, It is 



X Preface 

the purpose recognized by this canon that 
absolves a writer from the charge of a want 
of reverence for the past when he is com- 
pelled to contend against it, and that sup- 
ports the rights of adverse criticism upon 
his own work. When it is the sword of 
the spirit by which a man seeks to live, he 
could ask%o happier fate than to die by it. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

y/ I. Conditions of the Discussion .... i 

X^II. Signs of Hope 9 

y^lll. The Deeper Issues of the Debate . . 16 

yy/^^' The Evidence for the Denial ... 26 

V. Value of the Evidence for Denial . 32 

VI. Postulates of Immortality ... -45 

VII. Illogical Limitations 63 

VIII. The New Humanity 81 

IX. The New Theatre for the Absolute 

Moral Purpose 90 

X. Determinism and Freedom 96 

XL The Verdict of the Infinite .... 105 




IMMORTALITY AND THE 
NEW THEODICY 



Conditions of the Discussion 

HE first note in Plato's discussion 
of immortality in the '' Phaedo '' 
is the interest expressed in the 
personal bearing of Socrates face to face 
with death. The question is put at the 
start, " And how did he die ? " The 
answer to this question constitutes the 
lengthened charm of the opening and 
the pathos and majesty of the closing 
chapters of the immortal dialogue. Read- 
ers of great literature, no less than those 
who bring their humanity with them to 
the consideration of the ultimate mean- 
ing of existence, will be slow to surrender 
these memorials of one of the. strongest 



2 Conditions of the Discussion 

and best of men, or to conclude that they 
are in the way of the argument. In 
Plato's hands the personal interest is pres- 
ent as motive to the philosophical en- 
deavor ; it is there as background, and as 
atmosphere to the strenuous picture. He 
employs it as introduction, recalls it from 
time to time in the course of the argu- 
ment, and returns to it at the end, always 
in the service of the strictly rational con- 
sideration of his problem. In the strength 
of passionate desire to learn of the bearing 
of a great man confronted by death, the 
profound thinker moves out upon his in- 
comparable discussion. And all those who 
hope to win even the slightest attention 
to their words upon this subject must here 
follow his example. They must bring their 
humanity into the field ; as men they must 
come to the grand debate. The sense of 
death as a sore and solemn trial is almost 
universal, and those who, like Cromwell 
and Agricola, Paul and Socrates, lift it to 
the levels of moral grandeur, inspire a rev- 



Conditions of the Discussion ^ 

erential satisfaction that cannot be meas- 
ured. In their various ways they flood 
death with their humanity ; they keep the 
problem which it raises a human problem, 
and thus create heart and hope for the in- 
tellectual wrestle with it. The multitudes 
continue to linger about the cross because 
of the sublimity of the personal bearing of 
Christ in death, and because they believe 
that he is humanity's best representative. 
It is through this deep and abiding inter- 
est in the fortune of men that the advance 
is made to the present argument. This 
passion of humanity, in which peasant and 
philosopher alike share, may be relied upon 
now, as when Socrates drank the hemlock, 
to sharpen the intellect for its task, to fill 
it with the incorruptible love of truth, and 
to hold it with patient wisdom to its best 
endeavor. 

In any profitable consideration of the 
immortality of man, it is essential that the 
limits be determined within which the dis- 
cussion must move. What to expect upon 



4 Conditions of the Discussion 

a subject like this is half the battle. One 
must surrender at the start all hope of 
demonstration. But, then, absolute proof 
or demonstration is possible of a very- 
small part of what is universally received 
as knowledge. It is clearly impossible to 
demonstrate the facts of history. At best 
they must be accepted on the testimony of 
witnesses ; and even when the testimony 
is sifted by experts, the belief to which it 
leads is not grounded upon complete proof, 
but upon the capacity and integrity of the 
men from whom it came. The monu- 
mental record of Thucydides is universally 
accepted as true, not because his facts 
have been independently verified, but be- 
cause of the confidence reposed in the his- 
torian. Nobody who appreciates the value 
of words pretends that the doctrine of 
evolution, which has become the work- 
ing hypothesis of the intellectual world, is 
demonstrated. That would involve an ex- 
haustive knowledge of the cosmos and its 
total history. Until man becomes omnis- 



Conditions of the Discussion 5 

cient, the conception of development as 
giving the sole method by which the Crea- 
tor works in space and time must remain 
incapable of complete attestation. No clear 
thinker will claim that the uniformity of 
nature is an idea established by induction. 
The induction would have to be as wide 
as cosmic history, it would have to be made 
by men as old as history, and to contempo- 
raries of the same universal reach of life, 
in order for the doctrine of the uniformity 
of nature to stand, even as regards the 
past, upon the ground of demonstration. 
Suns rise and set, moons wax and wane, 
tides ebb and flow, seasons come and pass 
away, day and night follow each other in 
unbroken and impressive succession ; and 
from the limited observation which we and 
our contemporaries are able to make, we 
conclude that this has been the invariable 
order from the beginning, and that it will 
continue to be the invariable order to the 
end. But the conclusion is a tremendous 
assumption, and if we can hold no beliefs 



6 Conditions of the Discussion 

that are incapable of complete logical justi- 
fication, we must surrender this and hun- 
dreds like it that are part of the substance 
of our solidest thinking. The remark of 
one traveler to another, on taking a last 
look at Mont Blanc before leaving Cha- 
mounix, *^ It appears as if it would stay 
there until we come back,'' exactly ex- 
presses the feeling toward the essential 
and indemonstrable assumptions of sci- 
ence. Upon the largest and best thought 
they inspire confidence in their validity, 
and nothing more can be said for them, or 
need be. 

The belief in immortality is not, there- 
fore, excluded from a legitimate place in 
human thought because it does not admit 
of demonstration. It is a future event, 
and as such cannot be proved. Even if 
the reports of the spiritist are accepted 
as authentic, still the fact that some men 
have survived death does not prove that 
all men must. A flock of sheep come to 
a river. A number of them swim safely 



Conditions of the Discussion y 

across, and bleat to their brethren behind, 
telling them as plainly as can be that 
they still live ; nevertheless the sheep who 
have not yet tried the river seem a good 
deal excited. The question with them is 
not whether others have survived the 
wash and beat of the stream, but whether 
they shall survive. That is not proved, 
and in the nature of the case cannot be. 
An intelligent member of the flock, hav- 
ing known the weakness of many of its 
brethren who report that they have safely 
crossed the flood, and wisely judging its 
own superior strength, might feel comfort- 
ably sure of survival. Spiritism, even if 
accepted as authentic, cannot yield demon- 
stration. It still leaves those who have 
not tasted death in the sphere of moral 
faith. It may be admitted that if certain 
of its survivals were attested, it would 
practically remove all ground of fear for 
even the weakest among the living. The 
point to be observed, however, is that 
human immortality is incapable of demon- 



8 Conditions of the Discussion 

stration, that absolute logical justification 
upon such a subject is impossible and 
even inconceivable. The discussion must 
therefore move in another sphere. Men 
must moderate their intellectual expecta- 
tions, and be prepared to act here, as 
they do elsewhere, upon differing degrees 
of moral consideration. If the Eternal 
should speak, as millions of our fellow- 
men believe that he has spoken, upon this 
question, the acceptance of his word would 
not be repose in a demonstration, but 
confidence in the Divine speaker. Even 
on the part of those who accept it, the 
profoundest appeal of the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ is to moral confidence ; 
*' Because I live, ye shall live also." ^ 

1 John xiv. 19. 




II 

Signs of Hope 

HE prevailing mood upon this 
question of a future life among 
wise men is full of serious in- 
terest and hope. Generally it is one of 
prophetic silence. The oracles are dumb 
because they are under Bacon's command 
to weigh and consider. The old argu- 
ments, the venerable certainties, the tra- 
ditional repose, are broken up, and again 
those who walk by faith are face to face 
with the ultimate order of the universe. 
It is always a good sign when men are " in 
mute dialogue with death, judgment, and 
eternity." Those who to-day are profound 
believers have come out of great tribula- 
tion ; they have won their faith through 
victorious insight ; they feel that they 
have seen God face to face, and that in 



lo Signs of Hope 

consequence their life is preserved. Those 
who doubt nobly, for the most part, doubt 
in hope. Thus the wise and governing 
mind, the mind that shapes the spiritual 
habit of the generation whose servant it is, 
is once more in movement upon this ques- 
tion of life after death. It is, as has been 
said, a prophetic hour. The oracles are 
dumb, not because they have nothing to 
say, but because they are preparing for a 
new apocalypse. The sense of difficulty is 
compelling silence ; and golden silence is 
preceding golden speech. The oracles are 
dumb, not because the priest is dead, but 
because he is waiting for the new wisdom 
to gather in his heart, and form itself into 
a fresh and mightier message to the wor- 
shiper. 

There is doubtless among us the mood 
of Swift, the mood of misery, contempt, 
and scorn. There are those who sympa- 
thize with him when they see him paint- 
ing his awful picture of the Struldbrugs, 
making the flesh creep over the horror of 



Signs of Hope ii 

perpetual existence, inciting the heart to 
pray for the boon of self-forgetfulness, 
changing hope to fear, and lifting the 
light from the human ideal of endless life 
which it has hitherto glorified to the grim 
rest of absolute unconsciousness. But 
never as now was scorn so widely discred- 
ited as the key to the mystery of our 
being. Omar Khayyam still has his disci- 
ples. His light-hearted mockery, ghastly 
humor, and gay assurance of the empti- 
ness of existence are to certain moral 
types contagious. 

" Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument, 
About it and about ; but evermore 
Came out by the same door wherein I went. 

" With them the seed of wisdom I did sow 

And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow, 
And this was all the harvest that I reap'd, 
I came like water and like wind I go. 

" The revelations of devout and learned 
Who rose before us, and as prophets bum'd. 



12 Signs of Hope 

Are all but stories, which, awoke from sleep, 
They told their comrades, and to sleep returned." 

Still mirth, mockery, and dogmatism are 
not the method of the scientific spirit. 
Nor was there ever a time when they could ' 
be described with less truth as the ac- 
cepted path to salvation. 

The settled despair, the consistent and 
perfected pessimism of ^'The City of Dread- 
ful Night,'' is too tremendous for the mob 
of unbelievers ; and while many an heir of 
faith has to pass through this desert to his 
spiritual patrimony, it is the final abode of 
but few. The number is small of those 
who are permanently paralyzed with 

'* The sense that every struggle brings defeat 

Because Fate holds no prize to crown success ; 
That all the oracles are dumb or cheat, 

Because they have no secret to express ; 
That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain 
Because there is no light behind the curtain ; 
That all is vanity and nothingness." 

Beyond all these is the Miltonic mood as 
given in the great Ode on the Nativity. 
The faith that has been is discredited, for 



Signs of Hope / j 

the reason that it stands in the presence 
of the faith that is to be. 

" Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine " 

because of the advent of a sublimer revela- 
tion. Old things are passed away in the 
sense that all things have become new. 
Many are the believers who to-day feel 
themselves compelled to raise the deepest 
questions, forced back until they stand 
face to face with the ultimate realities, 
driven to a new and tremendous wrestle 
with destiny, from whom the old certain- 
ties have been taken away, that once more 
they may think, and out of victorious 
thought discover the solider ground for 
the ineradicable faith. The discipline of 
doubt is indispensable to the growing in- 
sight of mankind ; and whenever, as to-day, 
and particularly upon the question of the 
future life, the sense of difficulty induces 
silence and profounder meditation, a pro- 
phetic hour has arrived. The deeper in- 



!4 Signs of Hope 

sight will gradually perfect itself, and once 

again break upon the world in song, 

" Such music as 't is said 
Before was never made, 

But when of old the sons of morning sung, 
While the Creator great 
His constellations set, 

And the well-balanced world on hinges hung, 
And cast the dark foundations deep, 
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.*' 

The moods of pessimism come and go ; 
they are like the fresh outbreaks of a 
plague. While humanity is never secure 
against them, they do not abide, and it 
may be hoped that, with better intellectual 
sanitation and robuster character, they will 
finally disappear. At any rate, they are 
abnormal and cannot endure. The histo- 
rian of thought knows that they are tran- 
sient even when they persist through an 
entire generation. And we must return 
to the ultimate fact that the permanent in 
thought, the everlasting in belief, is the 
fabrication of the spirits in whom normal 
humanity is sovereign. Imagine an insect 



Signs of Hope 75 

of an hour's life born under the blackness 
of a thunder-cloud. What must needs be 
its philosophy of the universe ! The uni- 
verse is going to wreck ; in this state of 
affairs it was born with multitudinous com- 
panions, and it dies with all things march- 
ing on to the apparently fatal catastrophe. 
Men know that it is otherwise in this im- 
aginary instance, and yet they expand 
insignificant moods until they blot the sun 
out of heaven ; they elaborate abnormal 
and passing phases of thought until they 
seem to darken the universe ; they see 
the thunder-cloud and believe it to be the 
sign of doom. 




Ill 

The Deeper Issues of the Debate 

HE new prophetic mood to which 
reference has been made has al- 
ready begun to utter itself in the 
clearer appreciation of the deeper issues 
of the grand debate. The problem is, of 
course, the permanence of the human per- 
sonality, the continuance of the soul after 
death, in the possession of memory, reason, 
and self-conscious life. But this problem 
states itself as never before. It is no 
longer, as with the ancient world, a ques- 
tion of more or less of sensuous existence ; 
nor, as with times that in comparison may 
be termed recent, a matter relating mainly 
to the gratification or disappointment of 
human desire. It is a duel between two 
contrasted philosophies of man's existence, 
between universal reason and its opposite, 



The Deeper Issues of the Debate ly 

between a noble optimism, and an absolute 
pessimism. Are man's rational world and 
God's at heart coincident and concordant ? 
Is the sphere in which human beings live, 
and which they seek to bring under the 
forms of reasonable thought and lofty 
morality, a harmonious part of the uni- 
verse ? Are the realms of the human and 
the Infinite capable of reconciliation, or 
are they in hopeless hostility ? These are 
the issues involved. The question of the 
immortality of man is nothing less than 
the question of the reality of man's world, 
its integrity and worth for the universe. 
And this means simply the ultimate rea- 
sonableness or unreasonableness, the intel- 
ligence or brutality, of the Power that is 
responsible for our existence. The debate 
thus involves, at the outset, the life of rea- 
son, the reality of thought, the existence of 
an intelligible universe. This planet is 
surrounded by the stellar spaces, and the 
denial of immortality may be figured by 
the thought that the sky constitutes a fixed 



1 8 The Deeper Issues of the Debate 

barrier, a wall inside of which men live and 
think, but beyond which exists nothing for 
them. In that outside realm there are no 
correspondences to this in which they live ; 
reason and right with them are not reason 
and right with it. Between the circle 
within the wall and that beyond it, there 
is no continuity, no sympathy, no relation 
except one of dead antagonism. The rights 
of thought, the significance of conscience, 
the meaning of our human world, reach 
only to the walls, and over that barrier the 
infinite enemy of man is looking, and pre- 
paring an invasion that shall at last be an 
utter desolation. On the other hand, the 
assertion of the reality of a future life may 
be represented by the fact that the sky 
lifts itself as one rises into it, recedes be- 
fore one into ever ampler spaces, as contin- 
uous with the places which one fills, as 
concordant with the earth upon which one 
lives. As space here and there is one, one 
in its nature and in its laws, so thought is 
thought, and right is right in time and in 



The Deeper Issues of the Debate ig 

eternity, with man and with God. And 
the fact that one part of the intelligible 
universe is under the government of reason 
and righteousness supports the faith that 
the whole compass of being is pervaded 
by a Mind that is creative and supreme. 
Thus the fundamental issues declare them- 
selves. 

It is further clear that the denial of im- 
mortality, equally with the affirmation of it, 
implies a faith. Unbelief is belief in dis- 
guise. Negative thought is implicitly pos- 
itive thought ; for whoever denies that a 
given thing is true thereby affirms that its 
opposite is true. Denial is but the left 
hand of unbelief ; its right hand constructs 
and sustains a positive creed. Unbelief 
has its interpretation, its philosophy of 
human existence. It is assumed that the 
material organization, the body, in fact, is 
the main thing, its preservation and repro- 
duction the chief end of life. Intelligence 
is not supreme but secondary, something 
called into existence incidentally, to help 



20 The Deeper Issues of the Debate 

forward, at a given stage, the great move- 
ment of unconscious life. This merely 
subsidiary intelligence is allowed to amuse 
itself with the idealisms of science, art, 
morality, politics, philosophy, and religion, 
inspired by the pleasures that support phy- 
sical life and the pains that destroy it. The 
conception of man here indicated is of a 
being wholly terrestrial, whose thought has 
value only for his kind, whose morality has 
no consequence beyond his own weal or 
woe and that of his fellows, whose art is 
finite and whose religion is but a subjective 
dream. As it is impossible for man to get 
outside the attractive forces of the earth, 
to lift or project anything beyond terres- 
trial limits, as every missile fired, every 
aerial machine floated, however high it 
may go, is forever within the lines that 
sooner or later compel return, so it is held 
that human thought, character, and conse- 
quence are under similar fixed restrictions. 
The home of our bodies is the home of our 
souls. In origin, fortune, and destiny they 



The Deeper Issues of the Debate 21 

are identical. All efforts at the transcend- 
ence of material conditions are as foolish 
as the dream of the boy that he may some 
day fly his kite to the moon. 

The ground of this faith of the unbe- 
liever will come up for consideration pres- 
ently. Here and now it is to be noted 
that his unbelief is a faith of the most stu- 
pendous kind. In our time a great body 
of literature has accumulated that prac- 
tically ignores the possible transcendence 
of the human spirit. ^ Man is treated by 
these writers as beginning and ending his 
existence on the earth, and as sustaining 
no relations that go beyond the seen and 
the temporal. The literature in question 
passes under the general name of agnosti- 
cism, but it is aggressively dogmatic to a 
degree. If reference happens to be made 
to immortality it is to a belief that has 

1 For an admirable summary of this literature see 
the first chapter of Dr. Van Dyke's The Gospel for an 
Age of Doubt ^ a. book of high value both for believers 
and unbelievers. 



22 The Deeper Issues of the Debate 

become completely incredible ; as in 
George Eliot's wild remark about the in- 
conceivability of God, the impossibility 
of a future life, and the absoluteness of 
duty. The tacit assumption that the case 
is hopeless for spiritual faith, and that the 
limitation of human existence to this 
world is as plain as day, are chief corner- 
stones in the creed of the so-called agnos- 
tic. Under the pretense of intellectual 
humility a scheme is constructed that 
denies to human life universal signifi- 
cance, that treats all faith in a transcend- 
ent world as an illusion. The formula, 
*' We do not know, and therefore we can- 
not believe," is but a beggar's blanket, and 
cannot be made to cover the case. The 
logical strategy set up in the term "agnos- 
ticism" is too weak to stand against the 
aggressive frankness of its apostle. His 
true name is not agnostic ; for he has 
constructed a definite philosophy of life, 
and his negation of the Infinite, whether 
in the form of indifference or reasoned 



The Deeper Issues of the Debate 23 

opinion, is part of his total conception of 
the universe. Huxley is a type of the 
class to which reference is made, and of 
him it must be said that he is as sure of 
cosmic hostility to man as any Hebrew 
prophet ever was that the stars in their 
courses fought for Israel ; he is as posi- 
tive and, one might add, as enthusiastic in 
his faith that all things work together for 
evil to those who love, as Plato and Paul 
were that all things work together for 
good ; and it is clearly possible that unbe- 
lief no less than belief, negative thought 
as well as positive, may be a mistake. 
Believers have been of late so frequently 
reminded of the errancy of their Bibles, 
the fallibility of their traditions, and the 
weakness of their powers, by their breth- 
ren of the negative camp, that it may not 
be out of place to return the compliment. 
In view of the aggressive confidence with 
which these apostles of the materialistic 
creed preach their faith, it may not be 
amiss to remind them of Cromwell's ad- 



24 The Deeper Issues of the Debate 

vice to the Scotch, *^ I beseech you, in the 
tender mercies of the Lord, believe it pos- 
sible that you may be mistaken/' Every 
thinker takes his life in his hand, the 
denier no less than the affirmer. Unbe- 
lief is apt to pose as matter of fact against 
theory, as science against faith ; but the 
truth is that the universe by which men 
are confronted is a reality in itself, and 
all thoughts about it, whether affirmative 
or negative, whether described as belief or 
unbelief, are essentially of the nature of 
faith. Men stand equally to their con- 
trasted interpretations of what passes be- 
fore them ; neither believer nor unbeliever 
can pretend to a complete induction of the 
facts, nor to an infallible inference from 
those on hand. It must be understood, 
therefore, that the great poem of Lucre- 
tius is as truly the creation of faith as 
Dante's Divine Comedy. Both poets look 
upon the same universe ; they are specta- 
tors of the same pageant, and from what 
they see they form their contrasted judg- 



The Deeper Issues of the Debate 2^ 

ments of what is. They quarry their hos- 
tile faiths from the same rock, and, stand- 
ing by them, await the judgment of the 
Eternal. 




IV 

The Evidence for the Denial 

T is now in order to state the 
main evidence upon which un- 
^ belief rests its conclusion that 
there is no future life for man. This re- 
calls the problem, the survival at death of 
the essential human personality, the con- 
tinued conscious life of the soul after the 
dissolution of the body. To this position 
of faith it is objected that the fortune of 
both soul and body seems identical. The 
child new to earth and sky is as incapable 
mentally as it is physically. The growth 
of the physical organization is accompa- 
nied, in all normal cases, with a corre- 
sponding mental development. This pro- 
cess of increase is coincident to maturity, 
and in decline the coincidence is equally 
plain. Plato at seventy cannot think and 



The Evidence for the Denial 2j 

write as he did at fifty ; the mind that pro- 
duced the Laws is no longer the genius 
that created the Repubhc. Bryant ceased 
to write poetry in his old age, and took to 
the translation of Homer, on the ground, 
as he says, that old age incapacitates for 
creative activity. There comes a day 
when a Gladstone must confess that he is 
no longer equal to the burden of political 
leadership, when a Martineau must decline 
to enter upon new tasks. John Henry 
Newman has recorded his opinion that 
after seventy severe intellectual exertion 
means death. And indeed this participa- 
tion of both body and mind in a common 
fortune is undeniable. The helplessness 
of infancy, the vigor of youth, the power 
of manhood, and the decline of old age 
extend to the total expression of man's 
life. There is, as Aristotle says, an old 
age of the mind, as well as of the body.^ 

In addition to this common fortune in 
which the spiritual and physical parts of 
1 Pol. ii. 9, 23. 



28 The Evidence for the Denial 

man's being are involved, it is observed 
that for every change in the bodily organi- 
zation there is a corresponding change in 
the soul ; that affections of the nervous 
system lead invariably to modifications in 
thought and feeling, and that ideas and 
volitions originating in the mind are at 
once expressed in terms of bodily activity 
and power. The relation is continuous 
from the first signs of consciousness to 
the last, and it is of the most intimate 
and ineffable character. True, the same 
science that takes our profound practical 
experience of the marvelous intimacy of 
body and soul, and works it over into the 
established opinion that changes in the 
one are invariably accompanied by changes 
in the other, tells us, with the utmost can- 
dor and emphasis, that the concurrent ac- 
tivities are, so far as has been observed, 
only concurrent. They are utterly un- 
translatable the one into the other. No 
wise disputant upon this subject will be 
disposed to quarrel with the statements of 



The Evidence for the Denial 2g 

science as to the intimacy of body and 
mind. Self-observation and reflection give 
one a far profounder sense of that inti- 
macy than any experiment conducted upon 
another can. So long as the activities of 
body and mind are not held to be identi- 
cal, it is impossible to overstate the inti- 
macy. Every exposition of the unsearch- 
able closeness of the human spirit to the 
physical, organization which it fills but 
serves to make one aware of the mysteri- 
ous order of man's life. No believer in 
the unity and permanence of the soul need 
question, no believer can question, the 
soundness of Aristotle's statement, that 
mind is the perfection of the body as sight 
is the perfection of the eye.^ No com- 
parison less strong and extreme can ade- 
quately express the truly ineffable relation 
between the inward man and the outward. 

1 De Anima^ ii. i, 9. This comparison Aristotle does 
not extend to the creative reason, that in man which 
makes him a thinking being. An adequate modern 
exposition of the great thinker at this point would be 
of extreme interest. 



^o The Evidence for the Denial 

Organization, then, is essential to the 
expression of mind ; to the unbeliever it 
seems essential to the existence of mind. 
For it we wait in the darkness of the 
prenatal state, for it we linger in the incapa- 
ble wonder of infancy; and when in youth 
and manhood it is ours, we feel as if with 
its development we had found ourselves. 
Then the turn comes, and the bodily organ- 
ization declines. Sight grows dim, hear- 
ing becomes thick, taste indifferent, and 
all the vital powers begin to live beyond 
their income. Bankruptcy comes at last, 
and with the failure of heart and flesh the 
last ray of intelligence vanishes. The fact 
would seem to be, so it is held, that not 
only is organization essential to mind, 
but also that this particular organization, 
this present body, is essential. Transfer 
from the earthly house of this tabernacle 
to the house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens, would appear to be an im- 
possibility. Thus it comes to pass that 
from identity of fortune throughout life. 



The Evidence for the Denial ^i 

from coincidence of activity, and from the 
manifest dependence of the mind upon 
the material organism for the expression 
of its power, it is assumed, or concluded, 
that the dissolution of the body is the 
extinction of the soul. It is, finally, the 
apparent indispensableness to mental life 
of the particular organization that we call 
a man's body, that makes it impossible for 
so many to believe in the immortality of 
the soul. The famous remark, attributed 
to Socrates, " God may forgive sin, but I 
do not see how he can," is not strong 
enough to serve the purposes of negative 
thought upon this question. It is admitted 
that the Creative Power may be able to 
secure the survival of the soul after the 
brain has become fixed in death, but the 
difficulty of so thinking is held to be so 
great that the only reasonable conclusion 
is its practical impossibility. 



Value of the Evidence for Denial 




T now becomes necessary to review 
the evidence presented for the 
behef that the soul cannot sur- 
vive the death of the body. And as a 
preliminary, it should be remarked that 
the difficulty of seeing through the case to 
a positive faith is precisely what consti- 
tutes it a problem. If there were no coin- 
cident growth and decline of mind and 
body, no interdependence, no community 
of fortune, and no close and unsearcha- 
ble connection between them, there would 
be no problem. The statement of these 
admitted facts is only, as the lawyers say, 
the putting in of the case. Argument 
is deferred, interpretation and judgment 
come later. Whenever, therefore, the 
facts previously enumerated about the in- 



Value of the Evidence for Denial ^5 

terrelation of the soul and the body ap- 
pear conclusive against hope, it must be 
borne in mind that this is simply prejudg- 
ment. The sense of difficulty created by 
the facts merely means, in the first in- 
stance, that faith in immortality has be- 
come a problem. If there were no dark 
and distressing side to human existence, if 
there were no difficulties in the way of 
belief, there would be no room for debate. 
But if some subtraction must be made 
from the apparent weight of evidence 
against hope, on the ground that only thus 
is the question raised to serious impor- 
tance, a further and perhaps larger deduc- 
tion is necessary, owing to the activity in 
the matter of sense and imagination. The 
blow on the head which is followed by in- 
stantaneous loss of mental expression, the 
whiff of ether that carries the patient into 
apparent absolute insensibility, the acci- 
dent that turns the man of genius into an 
imbecile for the remainder of his days, the 
slow decay of the physical frame, and the 



^4 Value of the Evidence for Denial 

corresponding disappearance of intellectual 
power, mightily affect feeling. The senses 
take in such situations with abnormal in- 
tensity. The impression, powerful at the 
time, becomes a permanent memory ; and 
the tragic poet, implicit in every man, here 
finds the suitable and stimulating material 
for the construction of the lurid drama 
that, after life's fitful fever, lays the weary 
and heavy laden to rest in the dreamless 
and eternal slumber of the grave. Men 
still fear death as children fear to go into 
the dark. The impression upon the sensi- 
bility is inevitable, and at first imagination 
is but the slave of sense. There is no 
moral blame in the matter ; nor is there 
any immediate and universal remedy. The 
sensuous feelings are slow to surrender ; 
they are dull scholars ; they hold out 
against truth, not, indeed forever, but for 
a long time. The thing to be noted, how- 
ever, is that in these feelings there is no 
argument against immortality, nor do they 
imply any real application of reason to the 



Value of the Evidence for Denial ^5 

problem. To dispose of the question by 
feeling and imagination is to fail to carry- 
it to the only satisfactory tribunal. At 
no time is Butler stronger than when he 
contends that the influence of imagina- 
tion, more than anything else, makes men 
torture death into the destruction of the 
human spirit. 

To this must be added, as far as the 
senses are concerned, the unobviousness 
of the other side. The psalmist said that 
he cried unto God out of the depths, and 
that God heard him. Nowhere but in the 
depths can the fundamental truths of the 
world be found. If men, in the mass, are 
incapable of profound thinking, profound 
living is open to all ; and in the unobvious 
realms below the surface the great discov- 
eries are made, and nowhere else. The 
process of knowledge that testifies so 
mightily to the unity of the mind is subtle 
and many miss it. The value of the ideal 
is not quoted in the markets of the world, 
and multitudes remain insensible to it. 



^6 Value of the Evidence for Denial 

The ethical illumination of experience and 
the moral trend of history are not obvious 
truths, and so are unacknowledged by vast 
numbers of the race. The capacity of 
man for fellowship with the Infinite and 
the philosophy of the religious life are 
matters not for sensational impression, but 
for thought ; and, in a word, the kingdom 
of heaven, that institute of the Eternal 
Spirit which includes the ideals, the values, 
the fellowships, and the hopes of humanity 
at its best and in its highest interpreta- 
tion, does not come with observation. The 
evidence for man's immortality is not in 
the earthquake, nor in the tempest, nor in 
the fire, but in the still small voice. And 
upon the world at large, which is very 
hard of hearing, that voice has but little 
power. If it were possible, which it is not, 
to make the considerations that support 
belief in the endless life of the soul as 
obvious as the impressions of sense and as 
palpable as the repetition of the lurid and 
terrible in imagination, it is believed that 



Value of the Evidence for Denial ^7 

they would absolutely control the convic- 
tion of mankind. So accessible to dramatic 
situation and coloring are the majority of 
men, and so insensible to thought. 

We come now to the final question be- 
tween belief and unbelief. What is the 
nature of the organization upon which the 
mind is said to be completely dependent t 
Professor Goldwin Smith assumes that it 
is now clear that the soul is not a unity 
in itself, but the name for the higher and 
finer activity *'of our general frame." ^ 
Upon a momentous question it is not alto- 
gether satisfactory to think Hke a philoso- 
pher with one lobe of the brain, and like 
the vulgar with the other. Like a philo- 
sopher Professor Smith tells us what the 
soul is. It is " the higher and finer activ- 
ity of our general frame." But what he 
means by the phrase "our general frame*' 
he does not say. This, however, as Berke- 
ley has shown, and after him John Stuart 
Mill, and every other thinker who has gone 

1 The Forum, July, 1896, p. 610. 



^8 yalue of the Evidence for Denial 

to the heart of the matter, is the funda- 
mental question at issue. And if one is 
to allow the great thinkers of mankind to 
mould one's general thought of the mate- 
rial universe, one cannot but be influenced 
by their work at this particular point. 
Since speculation escaped -its infancy, the 
world of matter has been generally held to 
be, in one form or another, an idealism. It 
is everywhere admitted that the material 
universe is not what it seems to be to the 
ordinary mind. In the process of analysis 
it is transformed into the permanent pos- 
sibility of sensations with Mill, into the 
Unknowable Power with Spencer, into the 
Infinite Spirit with Berkeley, and into 
the manifestation of the Absolute by a 
whole procession of German thinkers. If 
the analysis is but thorough and consistent 
and intelligible, everything material dis- 
solves at last in the Universal Will, as the 
falling snowflakes melt into the current of 
the stream. Matter becomes the popular 
name for force, force the scientific name 



Value of the Evidence for Denial 59 

for will, and will the philosophical explana- 
tion, guided by the analogy of the human 
personality, of the universe in space and 
time. 

Now when a surgeon looks in upon the 
brain of a patient, what is the nature of 
that upon which he looks ? He sees some- 
thing ; he can touch something ; he can 
investigate and operate upon something. 
Popularly it is understood that he is deal- 
ing with a substance foreign to the think- 
ing principle within. But can the surgeon 
get beyond sight and touch } Is he not 
investigating and operating in a world of 
mind } And can he say anything further 
of the object before him than that it gives 
rise to his peculiar mental life at the mo- 
ment, and that he possesses the power of 
inducing modifications in it 1 If the uni- 
versal matter of the ordinary mind is a 
myth, the material body is a myth. The 
particular specimen of the outward uni- 
verse, the human body, must follow the 
example, take on the character, and share 



40 yahte of the Evidence for Denial 

the fate of the whole. It seems unaccount- 
able that the philosophy which derives its 
life from Hume, and which dissolves the 
outward world into a series of sensations, 
should erect the human body, which is, ac- 
cording to the theory, but a given speci- 
men of that world, into a material organism 
upon whose life the existence of the soul 
is wholly dependent. Thinking of this 
sort is either the mad inconsistency or 
the base hypocrisy of the philosophy in 
question. 

We have thus seen that another man's 
body is but the condition of sensational 
life to the surgeon. We now ask, What is 
the surgeon's body to himself.? It cannot 
be the material organism of the ordinary 
mind, for material organism of that sort 
there is none anywhere. It can be no 
other than a form of mind, an attachment 
in the service of the human spirit from its 
Maker, a source of mental nutrition, an 
order which operates as receptivity when 
spoken to from without, and which acts as 



lvalue of the Evidence for Denial 41 

the medium of expression when addressed 
from within. The body is thus trans- 
formed into an order of feelings, the soul 
into an order of thought, and both into an 
order of mind. Our human universe is 
a dualism. It is composed of sense and of 
thought, and these two are in conjunction. 
The universe of sense has its law and ne- 
cessity, and it claims the order of sense 
that constitutes man's body as its subject ; 
the universe of thought has its character 
and power, and it claims the order of 
thought that constitutes the soul as its 
servant. The deepest account, so far as 
it appears, that any man can give of his 
body is that it is a form of his conscious- 
ness. It enters into his consciousness, 
conditions it, serves it, affects it in a thou- 
sand ways; but still it is no machine in 
the revolving wheels of which the spirit can 
alone live. It is a form of his personality 
that comes and goes. The great note of 
the sense-universe to which the body be- 
longs is change ; the great mark of the 



42 Value of the Evidence for Denial 

personal universe is permanence. And, 
therefore, it may well be that the body, the 
sensuous concomitant of the spirit, passes 
utterly away at what is called death, accord- 
ing to the law of its order ; and that ac- 
cording to the law of its order the person- 
ality abides. It should be added that since 
it is the sensational philosophy that is the 
usual basis for the denial of the immortal- 
ity of man, inasmuch as, according to that 
philosophy, there is no necessary connec- 
tion, no causal relation between the series 
of feelings called the body and the series 
called the soul, a mere concomitance, 
however striking, a bare association how- 
ever constant, cannot be held as evidence 
that the spiritual member of the fellowship 
may not exist when the other member has 
been withdrawn. How clearly John Stuart 
Mill saw this is evident from these words : 
"The relation of thought to a material 
brain is no metaphysical necessity, but 
simply a constant coexistence within the 
limits of observation. And when analyzed 



Value of the Evidence for Denial 4^ 

to the bottom . . . the brain, just as much 
as the mental functions, is, like matter it- 
self, merely a set of human sensations 
either actual or inferred as possible. Expe- 
rience furnishes us with no examples of 
any series of states of consciousness with- 
out this group of contingent sensations 
attached to it ; but it is as easy to imagine 
such a series of states without as with 
this accompaniment, and we know of no 
reason in the nature of things against the 
possibility of its being disjoined." ^ 

The conclusion to which one would seem 
to be forced upon this question of organi- 
zation is that the body is a section of the 
total human consciousness, that it is a sec- 
tion which fluctuates greatly during the 
present life, and that as an inconstant part 
of the personality it may pass utterly away, 
and still leave the personality itself in full 
vigor and open to new and superior oppor- 
tunities. Science can show nothing more 
than concurrence of activity on the part 

1 Essays 09t Religion, pp. 199, 200. 



44 Value of the Evidence for Denial 

of body and soul. Human life is a chariot 
drawn by two horses, and when one drops 
it does not follow that the other ceases to 
exist. Some embarrassment may be occa- 
sioned by the break, and some delay ; yet 
in the resources of the universe it is not 
hard to believe that another mate has been 
provided, in anticipation of the need. At 
least, nothing in the known relation of the 
mind and the body appears to contradict 
that vast and inspiring hope. 



VI 

Postulates of Immortality 




IjHE denial of immortality is the 
creed 'that constructs itself out 
of certain aspects of human life. 
Those aspects have been considered, and 
it has appeared that the facts do not seem 
to warrant the dismal interpretation put 
upon them. In passing now from the 
negative side to the positive, from a re- 
view of the denial to a consideration of the 
affirmation of man's immortality, it must 
be understood that we are going, not from 
science to faith, but from one form of 
belief, which has been shown to be prema- 
ture, to another which is held to be valid, 
persistent, and, all things considered, in- 
evitable. Since science is dumb upon the 
question, the belief in immortality seeks 
its premise from philosophy. The con- 



46 Postulates of Immortality 

struction of that premise may seem to de- 
lay unreasonably the conclusion, but the 
delay is not really unreasonable. For it is 
only as an inference from a given interpre- 
tation of the universe that belief in the 
future life can defend itself. The belief 
stands or falls with the moral idea of the 
universe. That idea is its necessary pre- 
supposition, and that idea at its best pro- 
vides the strongest foundations for hope. 
A more consistent expression than has 
generally prevailed of the moral concep- 
tion of the universal order under which 
men live is an indispensable preliminary 
in this discussion. 

The three grand positions from which 
faith in a hereafter for man would seem to 
follow are the moral perfection of the Cre- 
ator, the reasonableness of the universe, 
and the worth of human life. The three 
are at heart one ; for if the first is true, 
if God is absolutely good, the other two 
must follow. Still a few words upon each 
one of the three may tend to clearness. 



Postulates of Immortality 47 

That a Supreme Mind orders and gov- 
erns all things may be held to be capable 
of demonstration. The natural and sane 
operation of the human intellect conducts 
irresistibly to this conclusion. It is, in- 
deed, impossible to survey the earth and 
the heavens, to note the countless orders 
of life below, and the everlasting march of 
splendors on high ; to regard the uniform 
and marvelous operation of law in things 
the least significant, and in things the 
most sublime ; to behold everywhere the 
signs of unity, individuals running into 
families, families into societies, societies 
into kingdoms, and kingdoms moving to 
their concordant places within the same 
circle of being ; to dwell upon the evi- 
dence that men are living, not in a chaos, 
but in a cosmos, not amid infinite miscel- 
laneousness, but in an ordered and real 
universe ; — it is impossible to allow all 
these judgments their legitimate impres- 
sion upon the mind, and still resist the 
belief in a supreme and all-controlling In- 



48 Postulates of Immortality 

telligence. When Bacon says that he 
would rather believe all the fables in the 
Legend, and in the Talmud, and in Alco- 
ran, than that this universal frame is with- 
out a mind, he is giving expression to the 
scientific understanding ; he is the prophet 
of the sane intellect everywhere. 

It cannot, however, be maintained that 
the absolute goodness of the Creator is 
demonstrable. The complete induction of 
the facts accessible to man would show 
wonderful devices for joy in the living 
world, unimagined sources of zest even in 
the stern side of existence, and amazing 
adjustments in man's environment for the 
production of heroic and splendid charac- 
ter. Still, when all this has been said, 
there will remain a large residuum of un- 
accountable distress, and, what is more 
serious, an order that does not discrimi- 
nate between the just and the unjust. 
The converse to the sublime fact that God 
makes his sun shine upon the evil and 
the good, and his rain fall upon the just 



Postulates of Immortality 49 

and the unjust, is supplied in the famous 
line, — 

" Here 's a night 
That pities neither wise men nor fools." 

The belief in the absolute goodness of 
God is an assumption, an assumption, in- 
deed, without which men cannot live, but 
still an assumption, that is, a belief for 
which there is proof, but not demonstra- 
tive proof. The logical impulse impels to 
this belief, for thus it becomes possible 
to account for all the good in the world, 
and to hope for a good issue from all the 
apparent evil. The disinterestedness of 
a Moses ; the passionate devotion of an 
Isaiah ; the self-effacement and heroism of 
a Paul ; the reforming zeal and courage for 
righteousness of a Luther; the burning 
love of the saints of the earth, in all ages, 
among all peoples, and under the forms 
of all religions ; the moral integrity, the 
patient endurance, and pious humanity of 
the great majority of those by whom the 
world has been kept alive and carried for- 



^o Postulates of Immortality 

ward, and, above all, with us in this part 
of the globe, the sublime character of 
Jesus Christ, compel one to think of the 
Infinite as at least good enough to ac- 
count for this amazing total of human 
goodness. For it is certain that it could 
not have originated or persisted or per- 
fected itself against the purpose or with- 
out the sympathy of the Creator. 

One is also guided by the moral impulse 
to the great conclusion that God must be 
perfectly good. Men thus honor the deep- 
est and most venerable instinct in the hu- 
man heart. 

" Shall mortal man be more just than God ? 
Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? " ^ 

Here is the final moral incredibility. Al- 
most as strong is the expression of Plato's 
ethical passion, " God is in no way what- 
ever unrighteous, but he is righteous in 
the highest possible degree ; and nothing 
is more like him than the one of us who 
shall become supremely just.'' ^ It is a 

1 Job iv. 17, 2 Thecet. 176 C. 



Postulates of Immortality 5/ 

reasonable conscience that makes cowards 
of us all. One of the aboriginal and inde- 
structible sentiments of humanity speaks 
in the great words, — 

** I dare do all that may become a man ; 
Who dares do more is none.'* 

There is a moral law or instinct in man, 
inalienable from his being, which he can- 
not override and remain man. It would 
seem that this feeling that God must be 
wholly good should remain inviolable, and 
that it should be ruler among all human 
thoughts. It is not simply the religious 
impulse, but also the fundamental ethical 
constitution of ma-nkind that speaks in 
Whittier's faith, — 

" The wrong that pains my soul below, 
I dare not throne above." 

That *'dare not," coming as it does, not 
from the basest but from the best in man, 
rightfully and mightily supports the con- 
clusion that God is good. 

The necessities of worship plead for the 



52 Postulates of Immortality 

same thing. The mood of homage to the 
Eternal is confessedly the highest in man, 
and it is plainly impossible for intelligent 
man unless he is able to behold in God ab- 
solute moral perfection. The absoluteness 
of devotion, the fervor and sublimity of 
the homage, expressed in the great words, 
^'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
him,'' is unattainable except by those who 
are forever assured of the perfect integrity 
of the Divine Being. The insight obtained 
into the Divine method of educating the 
human spirit, through the higher moods of 
worship and the confidences established, 
all flow from the august assumption that 
the soul is dealing with a Being of utter 
rectitude and love. The logical impulse 
that finds good in the works of God's 
hands, and often, as in the moral leaders of 
mankind and in the Master of the Chris- 
tian world, immeasurable good, conducts to 
faith ; the moral instinct that holds it blas- 
phemy to think the creature juster and 
purer than the Creator impels yet more 



Postulates of Immortality 5jj 

powerfully to the same conclusion ; finally, 
the necessities of worship, and all the re- 
finement and strength that come to man's 
spirit by means of it, mightily support this 
belief. 

The belief in the moral perfection of 
God is an assumption for which there is 
proof, but by no means complete proof. 
Its deepest justification is that it is the as- 
sumption without which human life cannot 
be understood ; without which the ideals, 
the higher endeavors, the best character 
and hope of man, are unaccountable and 
insane. As F. D. Maurice said a genera-, 
tion ago, assume the answering Reality to I 
the first words of the Lord's prayer, " Our 
Father, who art in heaven," and the total 
of human history becomes intelligible. If 
scientific suppositions are justified by the 
completeness of their working, so here the 
order and hope that flow from the first and 
sublimest of assumptions would seem to 
be a vindication that cannot be impugned. 
And it need hardly be added that if God 



^4 Postulates of Immortality 

is the Father of men, endless life must fol- 
low. If there is a real relation between 
the Divine conscience and heart and the 
conscience and heart of man, it must be a 
permanent relation. God cannot be con- 
ceived as wise and good at the same time 
that he is believed to extinguish human life 
at death. Both beliefs cannot be enter- 
tained ; one or the other must prevail. If 
death is the end, God cannot be thought of 
as good ; if God is thought of as infinitely 
good, death cannot be the end. 

The second position from which faith in 
the endless life strengthens itself is the 
reasonableness of the universe. One great 
note of the order amid which men live is 
that it is an order. It is the expression of 
intelligence. The universe invites to study, 
reveals its secret to the devoted mind, wins 
the intellect by the highest of promises, 
the possession of the truth, into the open 
vision of at least part of its ways. The 
order under which he lives inspires the rea- 
son of man, incites to philosophic reflec- 



Postulates of Immortality 55 

tion, fills the spirit with the passion for 
unity, elicits in the intelligence the ideal 
of an intelligible world. And this ideal of 
the universe as intelligible is the most fun- 
damental and the most practical of all our 
purely intellectual conceptions. The arm 
of science would be paralyzed at once if 
the idea should come to abide that the 
outward world is a hopeless chaos. Astron- 
omy, geology, biology, physiology, psy- 
chology, ethics, political economy, history, 
and all science whatever would die equally 
with philosophy if the reasonableness of 
the universe should be denied or seriously 
doubted. One can imagine a race of crea- 
tures enacting an immense drama, immense 
for them, on the exterior of a soap bubble. 
One can picture their works of science 
and art and philosophy ; their sense of 
the bubble's physical properties and rela- 
tions, their expression of its resplendent 
beauty as it floats in the sunlight, their 
comprehension of its bearing toward the 
ultimate reality. And one can see that if 



56 Postulates of Immortality 

these infinitesimal creatures should come 
to the conclusion that their abode was a 
mere bubble and nothing more, some- 
thing isolated from all being, and leading 
through the comprehension of it to no 
universe beyond, it would be impossible 
for the scientific, artistic, and philosophic 
impulses in them to remain living and 
fruitful. This must be one of the many- 
meanings of that profound remark of 
Goethe, that only the believing ages are 
the fruitful ages. That the universe is 
throughout intelligible, that it may be un- 
derstood, one part by another, and progress 
made through the part upon the whole, and 
that when understood it will be found ra- 
tionally^^atisfactory, is the fundamental as- 
sumption of the intellectual exertion of the 
world. And if it is plain that God cannot 
be regarded as infinitely good, if he denies 
to virtue the "glory of going on and still 
to be," it is equally obvious that if death 
be the end of man the ideal of the universe 
as throughout reasonable is vain. The 



Postulates of Immortality ^y 

hopes of knowledge and of goodness, the 
sense of a prophetic human fellowship, and 
the expectation of a life concordant with 
the life of the universe are contradicted ; 
and the movement that began and that re- 
ceived fresh momentum from day to day, 
from faith in the world as reasonable, is 
turned back upon itself, and all things are 
rolled in everlasting confusion. The be- 
liever in the reasonableness of the order 
under which he lives must not be put to 
shame ; otherwise the belief will be surren- 
dered. Death as a finality is the demon- 
stration of the delusion of belief in the 
universe as intelligible. For it is man's 
universe that in the first place is supposed 
to be intelligible ; not the absolute uni- 
verse, whatever that may mean. And a 
universe that defeats his best life, that 
contradicts his deepest thought, cannot be 
considered, by man at least, as the expres- 
sion of Supreme Reason. 

The worth of human life to the Creator 
depends, of course, upon his character. 



^8 Postulates of Immortality 

If one is permitted to construe the uni- 
verse through human personality, and un- 
less one shall take his stand in blank ag- 
nosticism one can do no other, the best 
thing to be done is to continue the pro- 
cess and interpret the Ultimate Character 
through its highest historic expression. 
Humanity has a better right, surely, to 
claim to be the regulative revelation of the 
character of the Infinite than the orders 
beneath it can possibly have. And it is 
humanity at its best that says, "He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." ^ 
The worth of human life to such a God is 
beyond dispute. It must be of permanent 
value, not only in those solitary instances 
where it becomes the flowering of moral 
beauty and disinterested service, but also 
in our total humanity so long as the bare 
possibility of noble character continues. 
If the Supreme Being loves goodness, the 
naked capacity for it must lay hold of his 
conserving power. And therefore one is 

1 John xiv. 9. 



Postulates of Immortality 59 

ready for an expression of God's moral in- 
terest in mankind infinitely wider than 
that to which one has been accustomed. 
For the difificulty once surmounted of the 
relation of the soul to the body, the great 
obstacle to faith in the permanence of 
the human spirit is the extremely limited 
expression that has been allowed to the 
moral interest of God in the race. It 
must be clear that if one is thrown back 
for the ground of a given belief upon the 
character of the Creator, then only upon 
the widest possible disclosure of that char- 
acter, and the largest and most consistent 
thought concerning it, can one find the 
most assured basis for faith. The appeal 
in behalf of the permanence of man is ulti- 
mately away from all matters of physical 
organization, to the heart of the universe, 
to the Absolute conscience and pity that 
are believed to have dominion over all 
things. The freshest discussion of the 
immortality of man, therefore, must con- 
sider it with reference to what may be 



6o Postulates of Immortality 

termed the new theodicy ; that is, upon 
the faith that God exists a morally per- 
fect being, what is the full logic of this 
position in a consideration of the probable 
destiny of man ? If that faith is to con- 
tinue in the earth, it must provide a field 
for the expression of God's moral interest 
in the race commensurate with his charv 
acter. There is no other way open for the 
reconciliation of the actual and the ideal. 
The sincerity of the Divine intention in 
seeking this reconciliation, his unrestricted 
opportunity, and the infinity of his re- 
sources, must be put beyond the possibility 
of doubt. So much, at least, the faith in 
his absolute goodness necessitates. It is 
true that many profound and believing 
men to-day abhor all theodicies. The 
sense of the mystery of human existence 
is so deep that all attempts to carry even a 
single line of light to its heart seem fore- 
ordained to failure. The unfathomable 
depths of human suffering appear to be 
forever beyond the plummet of the explor- 



Postulates of Immortality 6i 

ing reason, and the shadow that lies upon 
the universe is too heavy to be mitigated 
by man's thought, however luminous. 
Men of this type prefer silence upon the 
ultimate problems. Still they live in the 
aboriginal moral sentiments of their kind, 
and their scorn for theodicies is the scorn 
of those who through feeling have tran- 
scended their difficulty. '* Shall not the 
judge of all the earth do right } " That is 
the bold challenge of those to whom refer- 
ence is here made. The problem which 
human history raises when placed in the 
presence of God is shattered by the explo- 
sion of a tremendous moral instinct. The 
instinct is precious, and its power is great. 
Let it continue to clothe itself in the 
noble words attributed to the first Hebrew 
face to face with Sodom and the Infinite, 
" Shall not the judge of all the earth do 
right .^" But this belief formed by the 
interior play of moral feeling becomes a 
vast premise for rational insight. The 
question is not between a theodicy and no 



62 Postulates of Immortality 

theodicy, but between a theodicy implicit 
and a theodicy explicit. Moral feeling 
holds in solution the sublimest vindication 
of the ways of God to man, and for those 
who long to add vision to passion it can- 
not be other than a service to life to seek 
for the intellectual content of the highest 
ethical sentiments. If any one desires to 
renew his confidence in the greatness pos- 
sible to a theodicy, let him turn again to 
the second book of Plato's Republic. He 
will there find a theodicy in behalf of 
righteousness without which it is impossi- 
ble to be an honorable man. And until 
the fundamental belief in the absolute 
goodness of God is pressed to the conclu- 
sions to which it inevitably leads, the 
weight upon those who are bearing the 
heat and burden of the day must remain 
too heavy to be borne. 




VII 

Illogical Limitations 

INCE absolute moralism or a uni- 
verse supremely and everlast- 
ingly devoted to moral ends is 
the grand basis of belief in a future life for 
man, it is necessary to consider briefly the 
various ideas of limitation that have been 
held concerning God's interest in mankind. 
These ideas, properly understood, mean a 
restriction upon the moral purpose of God 
and the moral character of his universe. 
The more widely they prevail, the more 
difficult do they make belief in a hereafter 
for the human soul. For whenever the 
ultimate appeal as to what is or as to what 
will be is taken to the supreme moral con- 
ception, it follows that only the noblest 
views, only the judgments that are in pro- 
foundest accord with their standard, can 



64 Illogical Limitations 

be true. If the origin, career, and destiny 
of mankind are to be interpreted in accord- 
ance with the subhme assumption of the 
moral perfection of God, only those ideas 
can be valid which are consistent with 
that assumption. In a profound sense in 
this sphere, morality creates and immo- 
rality destroys its object. The supreme 
moral conception tells us what God must 
be if he is to be at all ; and it denies the 
rights of God to any being whose purpose 
and government fall below its own stand- 
ard. Sheer, bare almightiness cannot con- 
stitute its possessor the object of human 
accountability and veneration. Nor can 
omniscience raise a being to that sovereign 
elevation. The absolute character alone 
justifies absolute authority ; the ultimate 
source of all power and all obligation is the 
supreme love. The battle of belief and 
unbelief must finally be settled upon this 
field. The believer must purge his faith 
as Gideon did his army ; he must exalt the 
whole series of conceptions that go to form 



Illogical Lhnitations 65 

it ; he must work it over into a pure and 
consistent moralism, into a scheme that 
begins and ends in the perfect love of 
God. Anything less than this outside the 
sheltered fold of traditional orthodoxy has 
already become incredible. Anything less 
than philosophical loyalty to the absolute 
moralism of Jesus Christ handicaps faith 
hopelessly, gives skeptical thought an im- 
mense advantage, manufactures obstacles 
against its own success, and indeed creates 
the forces that ultimately make its pro- 
gress impossible. As unbelief must be 
pushed into full consistency, as it must 
be stripped of the alleviations that come 
from poor logic and from the associations 
of faith that have gone to form the bet- 
ter spirit of the unbeliever, as negative 
thought must be shown as at last atheis- 
tic thought, and this type of thinker must 
be compelled to do battle for his convic- 
tions from the position of absolute pes- 
simism, so the antagonistic view of the 
world, the vision of belief, must be lifted 



66 Illogical Limitations 

into the completest attainable correspond- 
ence with the supreme historic mind, the 
mind of Christ. Only thus can men see 
where they are and what they are facing ; 
only thus can the true nature of the con- 
test be determined, and the issues on the 
one side and on the other be decisively 
discerned. 

It is usual to discredit the view that holds 
to the unlimited moral interest of God in 
mankind by applying to it the evil epithet 
of universalism. But universalism is not 
raised as a question of fact by the position 
above taken, but only, if at all, as matter of 
inference, and that, too, in a region where 
inferences can never become more than 
hopes. In a root and branch discussion 
the philosophical and the homiletical inter- 
ests must not be confounded. If all men 
were philosophers, the two interests would 
be seen to be identical, but all men are not 
philosophers. Still the fundamental prob- 
lem of speculative theology and preach- 
ing is the same. It concerns the charac- 



Illogical Limitations 6y 

ter of God ; and nothing, in the long run, 
can strengthen the arm of moral appeal 
that is not warranted by the highest con- 
ception of the Divine character. It is this 
conception that is now under discussion, 
and the full logic of which it is deemed 
desirable to employ in vindication of belief 
in the immortality of man. To try to dis- 
credit it by the cry of universalism is to 
mistake the issue. Universalism is a doc- 
trine that has to do with matters of fact, 
that contends that, as a matter of fact, all 
men will finally be saved. The position 
above taken concerns God's relation to 
mankind, inquires after his disposition to- 
ward the human race, and from the as- 
sumption that he is a Being absolutely 
good concludes as to what must be the 
scope of his moral purpose. 

The only alternative to this final ap- 
peal to the moral reason of man, qualified 
for its task of judgment by long discipline 
in the school of Christ, the sovereign 
moral teacher, is the complete abdication 



68 Illogical Limitations 

of thought. As the uneducated mind be- 
lieves that the outward world is what it 
appears to be, colored, sounding, fragrant, 
and solid, as it believes that grass is green, 
the sky blue, the flower beautiful, the 
mountain a mass of rock, independent of 
the mind that considers, so there are those 
who find the standard of religious belief 
in the accepted traditions of the world. 
Whatever their name or denomination, 
wherever they sojourn, their true home is 
in the Roman church. The realm of no- 
reason is their dwelling-place, and the 
church of mere will-worship must continue 
to be their sanctuary. That agnostics 
should become Romanists seems to certain 
writers strange ; the truth is that when 
religious feeling takes possession of these 
men they can logically become nothing 
else. Their moral reason still remains in- 
competent to discover or to justify the 
supreme object of religious feeling, or the 
manner in which that object should be wor- 
shiped. Nothing remains for the poor 



Illogical Limitations 6g 

agnostic who has had the misfortune to 
become devout but to fall back upon tradi- 
tion and accept the contents of faith on 
authority. It is devout agnosticism that 
to-day is becoming the mother of a mena- 
cing institutionalism that is exerting itself 
to install over the religious mind extreme 
high churchism. Let it be understood that 
the movement originates and derives all 
its vigor from the acknowledged incompe- 
tence of the moral reason of man to fix 
the object of his worship, and Protestants 
will see the alternative that divides the 
field against them with atheism. 

The first grand form of limitation upon 
the moral interest of God in mankind is 
presented in the Hebrew idea of the rem- 
nant. No blame, intellectual or moral, 
attaches to Isaiah in consequence of this 
idea. It was the best that he could do, 
even under special inspiration, amid the 
mad condition of the times in which he 
lived. He held in his heart of hearts the 
faith in the victorious future of Israel 



70 Illogical Limitations 

upon this earth, and at the same time he 
saw her utterly unworthy of her high call- 
ing and completely incapable of advancing 
upon it. What remained was simply to 
look upon history as the operation of the 
moral judgment of God, destroying unwor- 
thy Israel, like a doomed tree, and when 
the evil growths were cut down and burned, 
feeding the hopes of the future upon the 
fresh sprouts sent up from the living roots. 
This was the way in which the greatest of 
the Hebrew prophets met the problem 
springing from the sublime faith and the 
terrible history of his nation. He could 
not surrender the faith, and he could not 
recognize in the actual nation the true 
nation. There was for Isaiah but one 
way out of the difficulty. The unworthy 
nation shall be destroyed ; the worthy 
remnant shall abide, and from this a new, 
holy, and victorious people shall come, in 
whom the original purpose of God will be 
realized. 

This is a theodicy independent of a fu- 



Illogical Limitations yi 

ture world. It is a theodicy exclusively for 
Israel. It is a theodicy according to which 
the nation as a whole perishes, and only 
the remnant survives. It is a justification 
of the ways of God with Israel which in- 
volves a tremendous miscarriage of the 
Divine purpose. It was the best that even 
transcendent spiritual genius could at that 
time achieve, but as applied to Israel it is 
utterly incredible as a statement of the 
whole truth ; and when applied to the na- 
tions of the earth contemporary with Israel, 
and to the teeming millions of the entire 
historic and prehistoric periods of human 
life, it becomes monstrous. If it is a true 
description of the Divine method with 
humanity, it must break down all confi- 
dence in the power and goodness of God. 
If it is anything more than a half truth, a 
merely introductory statement preparing 
the way for the larger truth, it excludes all 
idea of a future life for man, and it makes 
intelligent trust in the Creator impossible. 
One cannot avoid the feeling that a cer- 



72 Illogical Limitations 

tain injustice is done a great spiritual 
leader by isolating one of his ideas from 
its context, and by giving it an application 
which perhaps he never meant to give to 
it. It may be that as a doctrine for this 
world it was subordinate in his thought 
to some larger conception for whose utter- 
ance he might have felt that the times 
were not ripe. Still the idea of the salva- 
tion of the remnant accords so well with the 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and 
with other theories of limitation about to be 
mentioned, that, even at the risk of seem- 
ing to do dishonor to a permanent inspirer 
of men, it is necessary to show the total 
inconsistency of one of his conceptions, 
when converted into a finished philosophy 
of history, and made to cover the entire 
career of man with the belief in the moral 
perfection of God. No believer in the 
salvation of a remnant only can show the 
slightest ground in moral reason for belief 
in anything that is worth believing. 
^ This leads to the church doctrine of elec- 



Illogical Limitations j^ 

tion which still stands in many of the pop- 
ular creeds, and which is taught in nearly 
all the theological systems from Augustine 
to Shedd. Again, it must be said that 
with the conditions which these thinkers 
imposed upon themselves it was impos- 
sible to do other than they did. To those 
who believed that one text of Scripture 
carried as much authority as another, a 
restricted theory of salvation was a neces- 
sity. Where criticism of the contents of 
the Bible was forbidden, where the deter- 
mination of all Biblical truth by the abso- 
lute moralism of Christ was not insisted 
upon, where it was incumbent upon the 
believer to construct his creed from the 
whole body of the Scriptures, any other 
conclusion than that at which he arrived 
was out of the question. The patristic 
Augustine, the reformer Calvin, and the 
puritan Edwards were each like a Sam- 
son shorn of his strength trying to defy 
the Philistines. The conditions made suc- 
cessful resistance hopeless from the start. 



J4 Illogical Limitations 

And there are few sadder or more tragic 
scenes in the history of the higher thought 
of the world than the spectacle of these 
mighty thinkers, sightless in the presence 
of the most fundamental of all the moral 
problems of man, grinding in the prison 
of the great adversaries of faith, and thus 
contributing to the support of the unbelief 
against which they had contended all their 
lives. The memory of the heroic charac- 
ter, by which it will be found at last that 
they slew more than by all their deftly 
constructed orthodoxies, does indeed soften 
regret for their errors, and confers upon 
them a clear title to grateful and everlast- 
ing remembrance. They are here referred 
to as the great advocates of the theological 
doctrine of election, a doctrine which 
destroys the grand premise for belief in 
the immortality of man, because it makes 
the conception of the moral perfection of 
God empty and incredible. The sorest in- 
justice to the thinkers named above is 
done, not by those who practice upon them 



Illogical Limitations y^ 

a wise selection and a reasonable rejection, 
but by those who perpetuate their errors ; 
errors for which it is easy to find palliating 
circumstances in the case of the masters, 
but for which, in the conditions of their 
disciples of to-day, there can be no valid 
excuse. Election as it has prevailed, and 
as it is to be feared it still prevails in many 
places, — election and faith in a moral 
Deity are conceptions mutually and eter- 
nally exclusive. 

The form which the ancient idea of the 
limitation upon God's interest in man most 
frequently bears in our time is that of 
opportunity of salvation for this life only. 
Character for eternity is fixed in time. In 
this way it is thought a grander earnest- 
ness will attach itself to human endeavor, 
a more solemn and tremendous importance 
to the present opportunity. The motives 
which have led to the restriction of the 
moral opportunity for man to this world 
have been, in many cases at least, of the 
noblest character. They have been, in 



j6 Illogical Limitations 

the first instance, motives of fidelity to the 
Bible and its teachings ; and in the second, 
they have risen out of the passionate desire 
to guard the interests of righteousness. 
The mistake of the position was twofold. 
The Bible was made for man, not man for 
the Bible ; and the book must be made 
subservient to the Christian interests of 
life. The other mistake was in supposing 
that the strenuousness of existence which 
the view in question sought to guard, and 
the idea of righteousness which it justly 
held to be supreme, were in mortal peril 
under the protection of any other view. 
Those who refuse to limit the grace of 
God to this world believe that righteous- 
ness is its own safeguard, and that in con- 
sequence human life retains its strenuous- 
ness, made all the more impressive because 
fired by a new confidence in God and a 
larger hope for mankind. 

It must now be said that a doctrine that 
confines the moral opportunity of man to 
this life undermines faith in the moral 



Illogical Limitations jj 

character of God. To say that the Creator 
has a supreme moral interest in human 
beings, that he is full of compassion for 
them, and offers to help them into the way 
of righteousness during the brief and un- 
certain period of their existence upon this 
earth, but that after death his mood is one 
of unalterable mercilessness toward all the 
failures in time, and that the environment 
of the future is so constructed as to make 
the desire for ethical improvement — sup- 
posing it to exist, which is not at all un- 
likely — eternally ineffectual, is to destroy 
forever the moral idea of God. Nor are 
alleviations of this dismal hypothesis at all 
sufficient ; such as the provision of a future 
chance for those who have had no Chris- 
tian opportunity upon earth. That makes 
a bad conception a trifle less incredible, 
but no more. It does not meet the ques- 
tion. What does the perfect and immutable 
character of God, as the Creator and Fa- 
ther of men, necessitate in his relation to 
the race } The question is not what men 



y8 Illogical Limitations 

deserve, but what God's honor demands. 
The old theology, which is always to be 
distinguished from the old religion and em- 
phatically from the Christian religion, was 
full of shuffle and sophism here. It con- 
tended for the eternal willingness of God 
to save ; threw the blame upon the lost ; 
and all the while it knew perfectly well 
that the willingness of man to accept salva- 
tion is the final outcome of the willingness 
of God to bestow it. The theory in ques- 
tion draws a circle, larger or smaller as the 
case may be, within which, at most, is gath- 
ered an insignificant minority of the human 
beings who have lived upon the earth, over 
which the saving purpose of God extends, 
but beyond which to the countless millions 
who exist there he is compassionless and 
implacable. Now this is the same thing 
logically as to say that one can cut out a 
circle in space, within which the law of 
gravitation operates, and where the order 
and beauty that always follow may be be- 
held ; but beyond which there is no grav- 



Illogical Limitations yg 

itation, no law of space, and where nothing 
exists except chaos and utter contradiction. 
The answer to such a wild fancy would be 
that space is forever the same, that grav- 
itation can be nowhere unless it is every- 
where. And similarly the sufficient ex- 
posure of the illogical theory in question 
is contained in the bare statement that 
God is the Father of lights, from whom 
Cometh down every good and perfect gift, 
who is without variableness or the shadow 
that is cast by turning. In all worlds God 
is the same, and his moral interest in men 
and his endeavor for them must be equal 
to the duration of their existence. 

The unrelenting assertion of the theory 
of a probation for men for this life only, 
coupled with the declaration that without 
the knowledge of Jesus Christ salvation is 
impossible, has told tremendously upon the 
sublime inclination of human beings to 
trust their Maker. This sort of thinking 
and preaching has made men suspicious of 
the Supreme Being, has broken down the 



8o Illogical Limitations 

great expectation which all souls naturally 
have from God, and has left them without 
the premise that is indispensable for faith 
in the future life — confidence in the char- 
acter of the Eternal. The old theodicies, 
whether of the remnant, or election, or the 
restriction of moral opportunity to this life, 
rend asunder the ethical idea of God. 
They are like old forts, to be praised for 
the service they rendered in straitened 
days, and at the same time to be univer- 
sally abandoned, as no longer of any use, 
except to the enemies of faith. Robert G. 
Ingersoll and others like him depend for 
their supplies upon a theory of the Bible 
which every enlightened believer has left 
behind him, and upon a philosophy of the 
Christian religion utterly discredited by 
the moral reason of man, and above all by 
the Christian religion itself. 



VIII 

The New Humanity 

HE advent of the doctrine of evo- 
lution has done much to discredit 
old notions of the relation of God 
to mankind. The vista of humanity which 
it has opened to the mind of our time is so 
vast and bewildering that religious think- 
ers everywhere have felt compelled, as in 
the light of a further revelation of God, to 
reinterpret old beliefs. With the entire 
field of humanity fairly within sight, with 
even but an imperfect sense of the reach 
and fullness of the spaces that beings like 
ourselves have peopled, standing only in 
the early dawn of this wide and wondrous 
day, it has been found impossible to work 
the old ideas of limitation, whether rem- 
nant, election, or probation restricted to 
this life. For such minds the work of ref- 



82 The New Humanity 

utation is already accomplished ; the new 
wine has burst the old wine-skins. No 
intelligent person who for an hour takes 
in the new situation, and allows it its legiti- 
mate influence upon the mind, can ever 
again support the traditional idea which 
limits God's saving interest in the race to 
this earth. A new humanity has arisen, in 
number exceeding the stars. It is too vast 
and noble to be consigned to perdition, 
unless all men are so consigned ; and it is 
too crude for any sphere except one full of 
incentives to progress. It is this new hu- 
manity that the religious thinker of to-day 
must reckon with, whose semi-brutal char- 
acter and amazing capacities for ethical 
improvement he must equally acknowledge, 
and whom he must cover with the everlast- 
ing mercy of God. 

It must further be observed that the 
goal of evolution has given new strength 
to hope. The cosmic process aims at the 
improvement of life, and when it fails here, 
as it has hitherto failed in the decided 



The New Humanity 8^ 

ethical improvement of mankind in general, 
it need not be held that the failure is final. 
The purpose to lift life to its highest pos- 
sible level, which is what the doctrine of 
natural selection means, need not be more, 
in the case of man, than a purpose tempo- 
rarily defeated. There is nothing to forbid 
the supposition that the cosmic or Divine 
endeavor will be renewed upon another 
and happier field. The idea of an end 
toward which everything moves according 
to its kind is one full of the richest prom- 
ise. Anything more than temporary de- 
feat is too tremendous an accusation to 
bring against the universe, especially in 
the sphere of its highest endeavor, and in 
the case of its final product in time. The 
doctrine of final causes, the idea of ends, 
and the responsibility of the universe for 
their fulfillment, has gained new strength 
and impressiveness from evolution. 

What may be termed the reversal of 
the method of animal evolution, when the 
process arrives at the character of human 



84 The New Humanity 

beings, and which Dr. John Fiske has pre- 
sented so strikingly in his " Destiny of 
Man," is another freshly open fountain of 
moral hope. The love of life, and the vic- 
torious struggle for it against countless 
enemies, which has been perhaps the main, 
although by no means the unmodified or 
only method of advance in the animal 
world, undergoes revision and even rever- 
sal, when evolution reaches the higher 
possibilities of the human race. The sense 
of justice upon which civilization depends, 
the sentiment of pity without which man 
cannot be man, the passion of love the sov- 
ereignty of which would mean the perfec- 
tion of human character, call for the pre- 
dominance of purposes that are other than 
self-regarding. If self-regarding purposes 
are still retained, as they ever must be, 
they are nevertheless transformed, and the 
self is no longer the isolated and Ishmael- 
itish self whose hand is against every other 
hand, but the self that is in accord with 
the Universal Self, and whose perpetual 



The New Humanity 8^ 

prayer is '* Not my will, but thine, be 
done." 

This new epoch, opened up by the be- 
ginning of the serious and more constant 
development of the moral life of the race, 
projects upon the horizon of the future the 
fairest hopes. The transfer is from a realm 
ethical only by anticipation, moral only by 
tendency and aspiration, to one where mo- 
rality is the sovereign consideration. We 
are no longer in the flesh but in the spirit. 
Henceforth, having been lifted into the 
sphere of the spirit, into the order of a 
universe whose law is love, we are to dis- 
cover, so far as we can, its character and 
scope, and to consider what pledges it 
gives concerning the destiny of mankind. 
And upon this level the very idea of de- 
velopment, as setting forth the universal 
method of the Creator, becomes prophetic. 
When man's ethical nature is reached, and 
where so much room and material for de- 
velopment exist, it would seem to be not a 
violent inference from evolution to suppose 



86 The New Humanity 

that this world is but the first stage in the 
moral discipline of the race ; that there are 
other worlds to follow where the discipline 
is continued, and that in the line of this 
consideration the magnificence of the old 
words appear : — 

" I have seen an end of all perfection, 
But thy commandment is exceeding broad." ^ 

If evolution is to be theistically employed, 
— and employed in no other way can it 
consistently be, — the amazing sense of 
humanity which it inspires must work 
freedom from inadequate notions of the 
relation of God to mankind, the goal at 
which it aims must create expectations of 
a renewed and successful endeavor for the 
race, the reversal of its method must open 
to faith a Divine universe, where the pro- 
vision for the ascent of man is the old 
vision of Origen transfigured, of an infinite 
stairway of worlds reaching to the throne 
of God. 

The main value, however, in the present 

^ Ps. cxix. 96. 



The New Humanity 8y 

discussion of the doctrine of evolution is 
in forcing an alternative. The mass of 
humanity which it rolls into the field of 
vision is so great that the moral concep- 
tion of the universe must either rise to 
meet the new emergency or perish. If 
the moral view of man's life shall insist 
upon identifying itself with theories of the 
remnant, election, or probation confined to 
this life, it is simply taking steps to de- 
stroy itself. For no man in his senses 
can survey the bewildering total of human- 
ity that evolution puts before him, and 
admit that the saving interest of God in 
mankind ceases at death, and still believe 
that God is a moral being. It is either 
something other and infinitely better than 
this, or it is nothing. The moral view of 
the universe, by which is understood the 
utter righteousness and fatherly kindness 
of the Supreme Being, must fight for its 
life. To meet the necessities of the case 
presented by the new humanity, it must 
itself undergo evolution. It is for this 



88 The New Humanity 

great service that the believer in God 
should be most grateful to evolution. It 
drives him back upon the deepest concep- 
tion in his faith, it compels him to con- 
sider afresh the significance of the idea 
of righteousness, it forces him to an al- 
ternative. Either this world is a moral 
world, or it is not ; if it is a moral world, 
the Creator's redeeming interest in man- 
kind must continue forever. If the limi- 
tation put upon the Divine purpose by the 
Latin theology, and by what still passes 
among us in all denominations for ortho- 
doxy, is true, every man who understands, 
in the least degree, the waste of life that 
this involves over the unmeasured ex- 
panses of time must abandon faith in the 
moral perfection of God. If this is true, 
men have no Father in heaven J if men 
have a Father in heaven, this is not true ! 
One must either surrender as vain the 
moral view of the world, or, holding it as 
valid, take advantage of the irresistible 
logic of it, stake everything upon the full 



77?^ New Humanity 8g 

and magnificent idea, and stand by a faith 
that fills the universe with light, the old 
faith that ^^ God is light, and in him is no 
darkness at all." ^ 

1 I John i. 5. 



IX 

The New Theatfe for the Absolute Moral 
Purpose 



E are thus introduced to the new 
theatre of the Absolute Moral 
Purpose. The entire period of 
humanity upon this earth is covered by it ; 
the total drama of man's existence in this 
world is the revelation of the beginning of 
God's endeavor to bring his sons home to 
glory. The universe in its total relation 
to man is a moral, or, if the term be pre- 
ferred, a redemptive universe. As man's 
highest attainment is his hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, so the sublimest beati- 
tude of God himself would seem to be 
the eternal passion to make righteousness 
sovereign over all his moral creatures. 
Man's field of service for time is the world; 
God's for eternity is the universe that he 



The Absolute Moral Purpose gi 

has made, in so far as it is capable of shar- 
ing his life. 

This view of the sphere of the Divine 
purpose is held as the inevitable conclu- 
sion from a consistent moral scheme of 
the universe ; above all it is held as the 
sole logical issue of the absolute moralism 
of Jesus Christ. It is with the moral char- 
acter of God, the moral order of the world, 
the moral condition and hope of man, the 
moral nature of his own mission, and the 
transcendent moral effect in history of 
his own career, that the mind of Christ 
is incessantly and absorbingly occupied. 
Everything is placed and everything is 
judged according to a sovereign moral con- 
ception, and the apostles who say that God 
is love are but giving epigrammatic ex- 
pression to the entire body of their Mas- 
ter's teaching. It is this conception at 
its best, accepted directly from Christ the 
supreme master of it, that believers to-day 
are to handle against its great adversary, 
the conception of a universe indifferent to 



g2 The Absolute Moral Purpose 

the fate of its own highest achievements, 
and regardless of man in his origin, career, 
and destiny, without purpose and without 
heart, hurrying forward to the grave at 
express speed all the human life upon this 
planet, and drowning all in the abysses of 
eternal death. 

It is not forgotten, and to obviate mis- 
understanding it is here and now recalled, 
that fine views do not necessarily make 
fine men, that a grand theological scheme 
does not of itself alone reconstruct bad 
character, transform wicked society, and 
institute the kingdom of God upon the 
earth. It is distinctly borne in mind and 
solemnly cherished, that the achievement 
of moral character by men and families and 
by human society at large involves a pro- 
cess of long continuance and of the utmost 
strenuousness. Seriousness in the pres- 
ence of the momentous moral task of ex- 
istence is the only permissible mood. Of 
that which has been from the beginning, 
both the shameful creation and the inex- 



The Absolute Moral Purpose 93 

pressible affliction of mankind, of human 
sin, it is impossible to entertain views too 
profound, so long as we do not date it 
from the Eternal, nor make God responsi- 
ble for its permanence. The way up from 
the animal condition into that of the per- 
fected son of God remains an agony and 
a bloody sweat. Nothing can change that 
pathway of torture and tears, nothing can 
mitigate its iron and everlasting necessi- 
ties. At the same time the struggling will 
desires to know whether the process is a 
reality, whether the sore travail is ever to 
come to the birth, whether the universe 
is for man or against him when he sets his 
heart upon the moral ideal. A creed is a 
necessity for human action ; for it is sim- 
ply the plan of campaign, with the sum of 
the motives that flow from it, which make 
struggle rational and the hope of victory 
possible. No creed at all paralyzes the 
will and eliminates it from the problem of 
living ; a bad creed distorts the character 
and arrests the development of power ; the 



g4 The Absolute Moral Purpose 

highest possible creed, the absolute moral- 
ism of Christ, gives the largest inspiration 
and the profoundest justification to the 
best thoughts and activities of man. The 
effort, therefore, to reach the better belief 
is always an effort in the interest of the 
better behavior. 

It will also be found that the view here 
advanced upon philosophical grounds is 
not without wide support in the writings 
of the New Testament outside of the 
utterances of Christ. Some of the sub- 
limest passages in the epistles of Paul are 
severely let alone, as leading the mind in 
unorthodox directions. The assertion of 
the universality of the Divine purpose in 
the eleventh chapter of Romans is sel- 
dom noted ; nor the Pauline pantheism in 
the fifteenth of the first letter to the Cor- 
inthians ; nor again the mighty faith that 
of Him, and through Him, and unto Him 
are all things.^ The absoluteness of the 
moral views, the sovereignty of the Divine 

1 Romans xi. 36 ; Hebrews ii. 10. 



The Absolute Moral Purpose g^ 

universe expressed in these and similar 
passages, will yet create a literature more 
abundant and infinitely nobler than that 
which other sentences, isolated from them, 
and thus made to conflict with them, have 
generated. Students of the literary records 
of the teachings of Christ and his apostles 
should be slow to admit that the religion 
that has, as matter of history, created the 
moral view of the universe, can be right- 
fully employed to support limitations upon 
its sovereignty that destroy it altogether. 




X 

Determinism and Freedom 

jlHE scheme here outlined may 
raise against itself the objection 
that it is a determinism in the 
interest of universal salvation. As to uni- 
versal salvation, no scheme is to be iden- 
tified with that doctrine simply because it 
faces that way, works toward it as an ulti- 
mate goal, and even hopes for such an 
issue from the moral travail of Christian 
history, unless it shall go a step farther 
and dogmatically affirm the restoration of 
all. The dogmatic assertion of the salva- 
tion of all men is universalism, as com- 
monly understood, and nothing else is. 
The interest of the view maintained is 
concerned, not with matters of fact, not 
with things which the completed history 
of the world alone can determine, but 



Determinism and Freedom gy 

with purpose, aim, outlook, tendency, and 
legitimate hope. A protest is hereby en- 
tered, therefore, against the identification 
of the scheme here advanced with the doc- 
trine known as universal salvation. 

As to the charge of determinism, even 
if it were true, it is difficult to see how it 
should be theologically objectionable. Au- 
gustinianism, Calvinism, and Edwardean- 
ism are all forms of determinism, and it 
is impossible to name any really great sys- 
tem of theology that is not open to the 
same characterization. The trouble with 
these schemes is not that they are forms 
of determinism, but that their determin- 
ism is of an objectionable kind. Where 
the purpose of God is held to control all 
things, as in these systems, and where 
that purpose secures eternal life for some 
before the foundations of the world, and 
permits eternal death for others from a 
similar antecedence in time, the remedy 
for the evil is not with the Arminian and 
the Wesleyan in the denial of the absolute- 



g8 Determinism and Freedom 

ness of the Divine decree, but in the trans- 
formation of it into accord with the moral 
perfection of the Creator. Make the de- 
terminism universal, a fixed and inclusive 
purpose and movement for righteousness, 
a comprehensive device ceaselessly striving 
to realize itself in the life of the entire 
human race in this world and in all worlds, 
and reconstructed Augustinianism, or Cal- 
vinism, or Edwardeanism must remain for- 
ever in the best thought of mankind. The 
question at issue, so far as it concerns the- 
ology, is not between determinism and in- 
determinism, but between the moral and 
the immoral forms of that sovereign con- 
ception. 

When the student approaches this sub- 
ject from the side of philosophy, he has to 
bear in mind that the charge of fatalism 
may be brought, with considerable plausi- 
bility, against the system of every philoso- 
pher from Plato to Hegel. Whenever a 
thinker begins with the Universal, when- 
ever the starting - point is found in the 



Determinism and Freedom 99 

Absolute, whenever the Divine plan of the 
universe, of human history, the course of 
nations, the fortune of families, the career 
of individuals, absorbs the philosopher, the 
explication of the grand movement of the 
idea is sure to open the way for the charge 
of fatalism. The assumption or the dis- 
covery of the Infinite, the finding and 
the working of the Divine plan for the 
dependent universe, will always wear the 
appearance of antagonism to the idea of 
human freedom. 

But after all, appearance is not reality. 
And subtle, perplexing, ultimately insolu- 
ble although the problem of moral neces- 
sity and moral freedom may be, it is not 
the blank inconceivability that it is often 
represented as being. Determinism and 
freedom come near being but different 
sides of the same truth. The case in 
which this general statement may best be 
tested is the history of mankind. The 
problem before the mind of the Creator, 
let it be jS^y^ is the movement of the 



H) 



100 Determinism and Freedom 

human race, from potential into actual and 
perfected manhood. The movement, so 
far as can be seen, is possible only on 
three assumptions : first, that God is Infi- 
nite Reason ; second, that men are essen- 
tially and permanently reasonable beings ; 
third, that the goal of the Divine purpose 
is the highest good of the race. Unless 
the movement is of the Eternal Reason 
upon beings essentially reasonable, for an 
end intrinsically good, it must be a move- 
ment without law, without justification, 
uncertain and vain. But beginning from 
these three suppositions, the reasonable- 
ness of God, of men in their essential char- 
acter, and of the goal of history, it does not 
seem difficult to see that freedom is the 
same thing as rational necessity, that de- 
terminism is nothing other than the victo- 
rious march of the Divine persuasions in 
behalf of the highest good of mankind. 
Certainly, as matter of fact, the power to 
resist temporarily the Divine persuasions 
is lodged in man ; but this is in conse- 



Determinism and Freedom loi 
quence of the irrationality that he has 
brought up with him from the animal 
world ; and in saying that it was fastened 
upon him by his Maker, the case for 
freedom is not even damaged. For the 
power to resist the immediate realization 
of the best wisdom of the world cannot 
surely be defined as the essence of free- 
dom. This is simply the defect of man, 
the irrationality out of which come all the 
retarding forces in human society. 

It is, no doubt, the entanglement of the 
rational and irrational in man that is the 
sore spot in the history of the race. The 
conjunction of the two in the human per- 
sonality is the work of our Maker ; the 
early entanglement of the two is the 
outgrowth of that condition ; the chronic 
and extreme nature of the entanglement 
is due to the weakness of reason in man, 
to its failure to refresh itself from God, 
and build itself upon offered power into 
practical invincibility. The guilt of man 
is not primarily for his weakness, nor for 



102 Determinism and Freedom 

the wrong that is the issue of it ; but 
for the strength that he refuses to absorb, 
and for the right that he thereby fails to 
serve. Reason is self-conscious, open to 
the influence of the Infinite Reason, and 
with the purpose for the highest good 
which is native to it, forever present in it. 
But in man this rational character is in 
association with an irrational force, and 
hence the duel of human history. The 
presence and persistence of moral evil in 
the world is proximately due to the failure 
of the weak human reason to re-create 
itself out of the Eternal Reason. 

However, to furnish final satisfaction 
upon the immense problem of the origin 
of moral evil is not the task of this essay. 
The question on hand is the nature of 
freedom as related to determinism. And 
it must be repeated that determinism sim- 
ply means that, inasmuch as God is a rea- 
sonable Being, and proposes for man a 
reasonable good ; and inasmuch as man is 
essentially and permanently a reasonable 



Determinism and Freedom lo^ 

creature, it would appear that the Divine 
persuasions must be finally availing. It 
is therefore no other than the highest as- 
sertion of human freedom and the strong- 
est warrant for the reality of it, to declare 
one's faith in the continuous progress of 
God's reasonable and glorious purpose for 
the race, and to hope and labor for its ulti- 
mate triumph. The triumph of God's 
purpose would mean the victory of right- 
eousness over iniquity, the complete eman- 
cipation of man from the dominion of the 
irrational within him, the transformation 
of his entire personality into the unity 
and peace of reason, and the enrichment 
of that personality with the possession of 
the highest conceivable moral good. 

In this process of transformation even 
the irrational is converted into a helper. 
It becomes the limit against which the rea- 
son pushes itself into clearer self-conscious- 
ness, the afflicting Philistine that rouses 
the inward Samson to moral hostility, the 
devil in hatred of whom the love of good- 



I04 Determinism and Freedom 

ness swells to a passion. The force of an- 
tagonism is thus broken into the service of 
rational illumination. It is as when the 
rainbow appears. The white light, in its 
swift career, runs against the sharp edge 
of the dark cloud, and out flows the stream 
of living beauty, as from a celestial wound. 
And so long as God remains Eternal Rea- 
son, so long as man continues a reasonable 
being, and so long as his Maker proposes 
for him a reasonable good, and moves upon 
that good in the strength of Divine per- 
suasions, moral necessity and moral free- 
dom will mean but different names for the 
same reality. 




XI 

Tlje Verdict of the Infinite 

|E come now to the ultimate posi- 
tion upon which belief in the im- 
mortality of man stands. That 
position is often little understood by the 
unbeliever. Whether he is right or 
wrong, the affirmative thinker believes 
that he has transcended himself, that he 
has gone over to the divine side of the 
universe, and that he has heard the verdict 
of the Infinite in favor of man. He lives 
in the progressive verification of the three 
great postulates of the endless life, — the 
moral perfection of God, the reasonable- 
ness of the universe, and the worth of ex- 
istence. The explanation of his supposed 
discovery will serve to make plain the final 
ground of his belief ; at the same time it 
will be his best defense. 



io6 The Verdict of the Infinite 

Probably the deepest wish of a serious 
mind, in regard to life after death, is for 
an outside, an unbiased, a higher and 
wholly competent judgment upon the ques- 
tion. The believer is afraid that because 
it is his own case he may not judge up- 
rightly upon it. This is true of believing 
human opinion generally. There is at 
times a profound suspicion against its im- 
partiality, against its honesty, against its 
competence. A lawyer does not expect 
from his excited client a judicial view of 
his own case. His interests have dis- 
turbed the balance of his mind, have 
spoiled the clearness of his vision. A 
statesman must often revise and some- 
times reject the notion of the public good 
framed by his constituents. They have 
unwittingly identified their own welfare 
with that of the nation. It is not to be 
expected that they can take a disinterested 
view of the situation. And in the same 
way, a man thinking philosophically upon 
life after death begins to suspect the in- 



The Verdict of the Infinite loy 

tegrity of his own thoughts. His feelings 
are deeply involved in the question. He 
loves life, and he loves a few souls better 
than life. He would like to be able to 
believe that the goodly fellowships begun 
on earth are continued beyond the grave ; 
that the inspiring pursuit of the ideal here 
is permitted, under fairer conditions, in the 
hereafter ; that the aspiration for truth and 
beauty and character that gives dignity to 
the whole struggle in time is to be satisfied 
in the Eternal. But precisely because he 
wishes it he suspects his judgment. The 
worn faces of those from whom he drew 
his life, the cry of his children, the voice 
of youth, and the whole tenderness and 
prophetic beauty of human existence, ap- 
peal to him with so much power that he 
must decide in their favor. 

And so a serious man desires to see 
himself as others see him, as the universe 
beholds him, as the Eternal regards him. 
He longs for a voice from the superhuman 
world, from the great outside, unbiased, 



io8 The Verdict of the Infinite 

and Infinite Life. He feels that it would 
be an indescribable comfort if there were 
any way of interrogating the Almighty and 
of getting his judgment upon the case. 
He has become weary of his own thoughts ; 
he cries out for a word from God. And as 
the seer when surveying Israel, not on its 
best side, nor on its worst, but from the 
elevation where he could see the whole 
people, when he broke forth in blessings 
upon them, his outside and prophetic judg- 
ment must have been of great value ; so it 
would be an unspeakable satisfaction to 
man if some one could repeat to him the 
verdict of the Infinite upon human life. 

Now this is precisely the intellectual 
attitude of faith. It believes that it has an 
assurance from the unseen, a judgment de- 
livered from the other side, an opinion that 
is favorable, and at the same time final. 
It is essential that this position be clearly 
understood. Faith proclaims itself to be 
the immediate vision of its object. Its 
great beatitude is, ''The pure in heart shall 



The Verdict of the Infinite log 

see God," not infer his existence, or take 
it for granted, or prove it by piling proba- 
bilities to the sky. The pure in heart shall 
see God, include his being in the rapture 
of immediate vision. Faith thus finds 
God, enters into communion with him, 
substitutes his thoughts for its own, learns 
to live out of his mind and heart, goes over 
to his side for the truth, and comes back 
to support itself by the strength it has 
found. This is the great note of faith. It 
carries in its heart the assurance that it 
has abandoned its original position of iso- 
lation, ignorance, and fear. It is a sort of 
solitary Columbus. The great mariner left 
the old world behind, abandoned its bar- 
ren security, put out to sea, sailed onward 
into a long succession of sunsets, crossed 
at length the unknown deep, found a new 
world, stored his ship with its riches, and 
returned with his vast prize. A similar 
feat faith believes that it has performed. 
It has a surmise, a dream, a conviction of 
the livino; God. It will not rest in its iso- 



I JO The Verdict of the Infinite 

lation and poverty. It abandons its past, 
sets out in search of the Eternal, goes 
sounding on its dim and perilous way, 
sights the Divine Reality at last, lands 
upon God's side of the universe, enters 
into a sublime league with him, fills its 
heart with his judgments, and returns to 
live and die by them. The thing to be 
noted is that the intelligent Christian be- 
lieves in immortality, not primarily because 
he thinks it is true, or hopes it may be 
true, or sees no reason why it should not 
be true ; but because he feels that some- 
how he has reached the mind of God upon 
the question. He has carried his case to 
the Highest, and has had the verdict of the 
Highest returned in his favor. 

This is the intellectual position occupied 
by faith, and the next task is to ascertain, 
if possible, the paths by which the believer 
leaves himself and crosses over to the Di- 
vine side of the universe. Columbus had 
the sea and his ships ; and the believer is 
not without tides that set toward the Eter- 



The Verdict of the Infinite in 

nal, nor is he destitute of means to ride 
upon their calm or tumultuous currents. 
For close at hand are the great instincts 
that plead for the dignity and permanence 
of man. There is an instinct that assures 
every man of the reality of the external 
world. Analyze that reality as you may, 
construe it as you please, it is there as 
reality, attested by a feeling that is uni- 
versal and practically invincible. Science 
accepts the external world on the strength 
of that feeling ; and every form of idealism 
that is not wild will admit that, however 
impossible it may be to pass beyond the 
human consciousness or to recognize in it 
a reality foreign to its nature, still the voice 
of another is heard in its halls, the pres- 
ence of another is beheld in its home. 
Upon the witness of a feeling, the trade, 
the science, the whole fruitful movement 
of the outward life, goes on. The reality of 
the cosmos is first of all given in feeling ; 
the intellectual justifications are elaborated 
from the testimony of that simple and su- 



112 The Verdict of the Infinite 

preme witness. A corresponding feeling 
vouches for the reahty of the moral uni- 
verse and for the permanence of man's re- 
lation to it. The sense of a universal moral 
order and its unlimited claim upon the hu- 
man soul are facts in the feelings, at least, 
of civilized man. These divinations of a 
transcendent world, these contacts with a 
supernal reality, these feelings induced by 
a presence other than human, are under- 
neath all belief, are, indeed, the mother of 
all faith. To their persistence and creative 
power we owe the great worlds elaborated 
by spiritual insight. They are the ultimate 
fountains in our humanity, and wherever 
they are unchoked they create the river of 
God. Their true history seems to be that 
they are in us, yet not altogether of us. 
They pass through the highways of our life 
like the wdre-paths for the electric current 
in the street ; they carry forward with in- 
exhaustible vigor the best work of human- 
ity. But they do not seem to begin or end 
with this earth. They are God's lightning, 



The Verdict of the Infinite 113 
drawn out of heaven, stored in human 
hearts, and spread through human society 
to do God's work. Their character bids us 
look for a worthy cause. These feehngs 
would seem to result within men from the 
order of their nature, spoken to by God in 
the night, and answering him in the dark- 
ness and out of the depths. They would 
appear to be the tides of our being that fol- 
low the pull of his power, the secret and 
sublime gravitation of the heart into faith 
in response to the call of the Almighty. 
While the universe is so great, and rea- 
son in the multitude is so low, these high 
instincts will continue to be one of the 
strongest supports of belief in the perma- 
nence of man. They do not represent our 
wishes ; they are not here because we have 
invited them. They represent the Maker 
of mankind ; they are his ambassadors, and 
they bring their credentials from the Eter- 
nal. They are here as the sea is here at 
the flood, because the universe rolled them 
hither, because God sent them. Why 



114 The Verdict of the Infinite 
should the beUever not trust these high 
feehngs that originate, not in his will, but 
in his nature, these surges from the eternal 
deep that carry upon their white crests and 
toss upon their glorious spray the verdict 
of the Infinite in favor of the life everlast- 
ing ? 

Kinship with the Infinite, or what in 
religious phraseology is called sonship, is 
another path to the Divine side. If a man 
should meet a being whose language, signs 
for thought, and symbols for the world 
were wholly different from his own, with 
absolutely no point of contact between 
them, he would never be able to arrive at 
any knowledge of that being. Kinship be- 
tween them existing nowhere, it would be 
impossible ever to come to a mutual under- 
standing. They would be to one another 
like the stone faces that stare at each other 
from the opposite columns of some gate. 
It would be sphinx looking at sphinx in 
endless perplexity and everlasting silence. 
In the same way, if the Infinite by which 



The Verdict of the Infinite ii^ 

man's life is surrounded were like this 
strange being, an absolute and eternal con- 
trast to humanity, knowledge itself would 
be impossible. One would be permanently 
unable to discover anything, to find thought 
in the heavens above, or in the earth be- 
neath ; to understand the figure and motion 
of the globe, the orbits and orders of the 
stars ; to reach any sort of science upon 
any subject whatever. In that case the 
universe and human beings would be to 
one another as Job and his friends : they 
would sit down in silence, look at each 
other in dumb surprise, and marvel at the 
common and eternal perplexity. 

Because we do know men and things ; 
because the world lends itself to thought, 
melts into the receptivities of sense, runs 
into the forms of the understanding, rises 
into a unity that corresponds to the per- 
sonal unity of the soul ; because the world 
is an intelligible world, we believe that it is 
alive with mind, that it is an expression of 
the Infinite Mind, and that in reading its 



ii6 The Verdict of the Infinite 

order we are reaching his plan. The plan 
of the human mind in sense, in under- 
standing, and in the personal spirit, is mar- 
velously adjusted to the surrounding and 
infinite universe. If men were not consti- 
tuted in a certain way the cosmic force 
could not give them all substantially the 
same experience in the senses. The ** sun- 
shine is a glorious birth " to the normal 
human being everywhere ; the sound of 
the going in the tops of the mulberry-trees 
repeats its rhythm alike in the ears of 
prophet and servant ; the rosebush wet with 
dew sends its perfume into the faces of 
all ; the fruit that is fair to the eye is dis- 
covered to be sweet to the taste ; and the 
solid earth supports the steps of the soli- 
tary wayfarer and the tread of Caesar's 
legions. There is thus adjustment between 
the Infinite Force and human sensibility ; 
there is this universal plan lying in the 
receptivity, and that plan can be nothing 
else than the device of our Maker. There 
is the logical understanding with its forms 



The Verdict of the Infinite i ly 

of thought. The world must be construed 
as a world of substances, as substances in 
relation, as substances that precede one an- 
other, or that coexist, or that follow after. 
Science is the application of these logical 
forms to the impressions of sense ; and the 
fact that they can be so applied shows a 
universal order in the human intellect, and 
an answering flexibility upon the part of 
the cosmos that amounts to a marvelous 
correspondence. Further, as man cannot 
rest with mere multiplicity, nor with mul- 
tiplicity in mere order ; as he must rise 
to the highest form of unity, that of his 
own soul, and try to construe the cosmos 
through personality, he finds that again the 
universe is tractable and gathers itself up 
into the expression of one Supreme Intelli- 
gence. This preadjustment between sensi- 
bility and the Infinite, between the effect 
of the Infinite in sensibility and the under- 
standing, between the unity in the Infinite 
and the unity in man, is self-evident ; and 
it vindicates the belief that supports the 



1 18 The Verdict of the Infinite 

entire intellectual toil of the race, that at 
heart man and the universe are akin. Over 
against the human mind in manifold mani- 
festations there stands the universe. Know- 
ledge is possible upon man*s part, because 
there is a mighty characteristic of identity 
between them. Two idiots might look at 
each other forever, and neither would be 
able to make anything out of the other; 
and if one were an idiot and one a normal 
human being, the same hopeless result 
would follow. Nothing like knowledge is 
possible between idiots, or between a sound 
mind and an idiot. And similarly, between 
an irrational creature and an irrational uni- 
verse there could be no communion ; nor 
could there be any fellowship between a 
reasonable being and a world without rea- 
son. As Dr. Fairbairn expresses it, " The 
madman could make nothing of the sane 
world, and the mad world would drive the 
sane man mad.'' 

Now, if the universe and man are at 
heart akin, if in his inmost being man is 



The Verdict of the Infinite i ig 

the image of his Maker, his son, it follows 
that when the sonhood in man speaks, and 
speaks for life everlasting, it is the God- 
hood in man that speaks and speaks for life 
everlasting. Sonhood in man is but the 
expression of the Godhood beyond man ; 
and when the sonhood declares its judg- 
ment in favor of the deathless life, that 
declaration is not of man but of God. 
When the accredited ambassador speaks, 
the king speaks ; and when the filial con- 
sciousness in man attests his immortality 
it simply records and transmits the verdict 
of the Infinite. " If our heart condemn us 
not, we have boldness toward God." ^ And 
it must be forever borne in mind that the 
belief in the divine sonship of man is not 
something with which theology and religion 
have alone to do. It is a belief that makes 
possible the reality of science, the reality 
of all knowledge whatsoever. 

Still another path to the Eternal is the 
truth of the ideal and man's answering 

1 I John iii. 21. 



I20 The Verdict of the Infinite 

capacity. We do not discover our ideals ; 
they discover us. They take us to the 
housetop, as Samuel took Saul, and there 
in the name of the new day that is break- 
ing they tell us that we are kings. They 
find us as the same seer found David among 
the sheepfolds, lost to the dignity of exist- 
ence under its dead monotony, and they 
anoint us in the name of the Eternal. We 
do not create our ideals ; we awake to be- 
hold them bright with an everlasting light. 
They do not originate in human hearts ; they 
rise like the stars out of the Infinite. They 
are objectively real, mountains at whose 
base men are born, and whose steeps they 
are to climb. They are the forms which 
the ethical character of the Eternal assumes 
in the human imagination, and their sublime 
chant is, ^^ Ye therefore shall be perfect, as 
your heavenly Father is perfect.''^ They 
are moulded by unseen hands and colored 
by the light that enlighteneth every man 
that Cometh into the world. Their function 

1 Matt. V. 48. 



The Verdict of the Infinite 121 

is like that of the chariot of fire and the 
horses of fire that descended from heaven 
and swept the man of God away. They 
carry men out of their appetites, away from 
sordidness ; they take them from the trivial- 
ity and vanity of existence, snatch them 
from the brute order of the actual, and in 
fires and splendors and whirlwinds from the 
Infinite transport them into the realm of 
duty, the world of moral service and recom- 
pense, the paradise of truth and peace. 
And whoever speaks in the name of the 
ideal speaks in the name of the Highest ; 
whoever renders the verdict of the ideal 
repeats the judgment of God. 

At this point it is worth while to consider 
for a moment the note of permanence in 
man's existence in this world of change. 
To those who have looked into the heart of 
the process of knowledge, and who stand 
outside the prejudices of philosophy, one of 
two things seems necessarily true. Either 
knowledge is a simple fact, incapable of 
explanation, a sheer and everlasting mys- 



122 The Verdict of the Infinite 

tery, or it is the work and expression of an 
abiding self. If anything in metaphysics 
has ever been proved, it is the impossibihty 
of accounting for perception, memory, im- 
agination, reasoning, and choice, with the 
person who perceives, remembers, imagines, 
reasons, and elects, wholly ignored and even 
annihilated. Simple obstinacy prevails in 
all departments of intellectual life, and will- 
worship has been a great discredit to philo- 
sophy. Experts engaged in a passionate 
polemic have too often, in the history of 
speculation, shown themselves possessed of 
a marvelous faculty for the evasion of what 
would seem to be a simple exposition of 
reality. The evil can be ended only by 
insight into the business on hand, by ask- 
ing how the multiplicity in sense, in mem- 
ory, in imagination, in reason, and in will 
can be reduced to unity without the activ- 
ity of the permanent soul. Science, his- 
tory, art, philosophy, and character are our 
greater unities, and it passes all comprehen- 
sion how they can even appear to exist, if 



The Verdict of the Infinite 12^ 

they are not the varied expression of the 
simple, perdurable, creative spirit in man. 
How the notion of a universe ever dawned 
upon a life that is a mere multiplicity, how 
this ultimate and sublime unity ever ap- 
peared upon the field of thronging sensa- 
tions and incessant change, must remain an 
absolute mystery. For after all the uni- 
verse as it stands in human thought is not 
given ; it is made. And again, how that 
which has in itself no unity can yet work 
this greatest of all wonders, this boundless 
order that we name the universe, is a puz- 
zle too hard for man to solve. The old 
argument for immortality, from the fact of 
continuance amid change, from the great 
feature of identity and self-persistence in 
the unresting flow of consciousness, is good 
at least to the extent that it carries the 
highest in man over into the category of 
the things that abide. The rock that shows 
its steadfast face above the sea thereby de- 
clares that it is not a thing of ebbing and 
flooding tides, of the waste created by form- 



124 ^^^ Verdict of the Infinite 
ing or the increase brought by dissolving 
clouds ; it discovers itself as part of the en- 
during structure of the earth. There would 
seem to be, in the fact of self -consciousness, 
a certificate from the hand of the Creator 
of superiority to the animal orders and their 
fate. 

In the moral sphere the unity which the 
upright spirit actually possesses, and the 
unity after which it hungers and thirsts, is 
still more significant of the class of exist- 
ences to which it would appear to belong. 
To entertain a single supreme purpose 
throughout life, as many good men have 
done ; to order the entire capacity, so that 
the greatest possible service may be ren- 
dered to the elected cause, — to Christianity 
with Paul and Luther, Edwards and Chan- 
ning ; to the emancipation of England with 
Cromwell ; to the preservation of the Union 
of the United States of America with Lin- 
coln ; to the welfare of single communities 
wdth a host of teachers and helpers of man- 
kind, — secures a moral unity for the human 



The Verdict of the Infinite 12^ 

career that is impressive indeed. And this 
unity of device and endeavor is followed by 
a subjective unity, by the life becoming all 
of a piece and the piece of the best ; as the 
apostle expresses it, ^' the simplicity that is 
in Christ," a condition of existence where 
the moral personality is harmonious, and 
where the harmony is of the Highest. If 
there be in the universe an Absolute Char- 
acter, the characters which appear in good 
men would seem to classify themselves with 
him, and to reveal his purpose concerning 
mankind. 

When the fundamental unity of the men- 
tal life is expressed in the persistent hold- 
ing, through good report and through evil, to 
one ultimate and ever-greatening ideal, and 
in the steadfast and passionate effort at its 
realization in human society ; when, through 
these projections of itself in ever-brighten- 
ing vision and in more consistent and heroic 
endeavor, the inward man is slowly but 
surely coming into concord with its su- 
preme aim, there follows the aspiration for 



126 The Verdict of the Infinite 

union with the Highest, the consciousness 
of fellowship with God, the note of perma- 
nence that then marks the soul would seem 
to be beyond dispute. Human life then ap- 
pears as if it had gone over to the Divine 
side of things, as if it had become an abid- 
ing expression of the Infinite Character and 
Purpose. It is this capacity to share in the 
thought of the Highest, this aptitude for a 
life concurrent with the Universal Life, that 
is the deepest prophecy of man's immortal- 
ity. And when the capacity is turned, as 
in multitudes of cases it has been, into an 
ineffable experience, it would seem as if the 
sense of everlastingness which it carries in 
itself must be trustworthy. Speaking of 
Dean Hansel's book, " The Limits of Reli- 
gious Thought," Dr. Martineau writes, 
*' We should rejoice that it had been given 
to the world if only for the reply which it 
has called forth from Mr. Maurice, — a 
reply which is not merely the embodiment 
of a completely opposite conviction, but the 
insurrection of an outraged faith, the pro- 



The Verdict of the Infinite i2j 

test of a whole character against a doctrine 
which pronounces that all the springs of its 
life have been delusions, and which tries to 
pass off human notions of God in place of 
God/' ^ The denial of the Divine universe 
is the denial of that which has been the 
source of the best life of mankind. It is 
not simply a polemic against a notion ; it is 
a contest against the deepest reality, the 
reality that feeds the character of the brave 
and good. To tear the religious soul from 
this ground of its existence is like uproot- 
ing the tree. It means death. That at- 
tempt may call forth intellectual defenses of 
the immortality that is denied ; it must call 
forth something infinitely deeper, "the in- 
surrection of an outraged faith, the protest 
of a whole character.'' 

It must never be forgotten that humanity 
is involved in this faith, that humanity is 
its witness. Upon the great postulate or 
assumption, in the teeth of much that seems 
to contradict it, that God is absolutely good, 

1 Essays^ Philosophical and Theological^ p. 283. 



128 The Ferdict of the Infinite 

humanity consciously and unconsciously is 
making trial of its vast faith. It persists in 
believing that the universe is reasonable, 
and that human life in its best achievement, 
in its best capacity, and in its enduring 
moral need, is of permanent concern to the 
Most High. Thus inspired it is working 
out its own salvation. Through the higher 
instincts, not of one man, but of all men ; 
through the kinship to the Infinite, not of 
single lives, but of all lives ; through the 
ideals that dawn, not upon a few 'favored 
individuals, but upon mankind ; finally, 
through the great note of permanence in 
the soul, the universe would seem to be 
delivering its decree concerning the dignity 
and destiny of the race. Nor would there 
appear to be any assignable limit to this 
witness when humanity as a whole shall 
acknowledge its chief task in this world as 
moral, and shall stand to it with something 
like the full consecration of its power. The 
ethical constitution of the race is plain, and 
for the purpose of this discussion it is 



The Verdict of the Infinite 129 

weighty with prophecy. But ethical expe- 
rience of an exalted type must be added to 
ethical constitution. It is hard for the In- 
finite to speak through his bare device in the 
moral nature of man, unsupported and even 
sorely contradicted as it so often is by voli- 
tion and character. A Beethoven cannot 
fully reveal himself through musical signs. 
The wonderful symphonies are indeed 
there, but they are hidden. The faithful and 
inspired interpreter must come, and through 
groups of instruments unseal the fountains 
of harmony. The moral constitution of the 
race is but the musical notation. The eter- 
nal melodies are there, but they are silent. 
The race must become partner in the moral 
enterprise, fellow-worker with the universe 
at its ethical task, if its heart of rhythm and 
soul of fire are to stand fully revealed. It 
is this voice that the prophet of to-day waits 
to hear, the voice like the sound of many 
waters and mighty thunderings, rolling 
through all the deeper and greater humani- 
ties, the voice of the Infinite speaking 



1^0 The Verdict of the Infinite 

through the race, at length become har- 
monious with his righteous purpose in his- 
tory, and registering his decree in favor 
of the immortality of man. 



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